B 875 
D67 
lopy 1 



LB 875 
.D67 
Copy 1 



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HOLIDAY PAPERS 

1910-1 1 



BY 

ANDREW S. DRAPER, LL.B., LL.D. 
Commissioner of Education 



The Education That Concerns New York 

Inherent Elements of Power in a System of Schools 

Religion, Morals, Ethics, and the Schools 



STATE OF NEW YORK 

EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

ALBANY 






1> 



A 



*N 23 !9l! 



THE EDUCATION THAT CONCERNS 
NEW YORK 



THE EDUCATION THAT CONCERNS NEW YORK 

Ordinarily we discuss schools. There is reason enough for it. 
The Constitution requires the maintenance of a State system of 
schools. The Education Law alone covers three hundred pages 
in our consolidated laws. The people of the State have $345,009,101 
invested in school property. In the last school year we raised 
by public tax $44,421,231.08 for school purposes, and the total 
expenditure of the people of the State for education mounted up 
to $74,423,825.14. No other money for public uses is paid so cheer- 
fully. It must be a very deep concern, a universal enthusiasm, that 
is so nobly expressed. Eagerness and idealism must be bent upon 
some great end. For once, at least, let us discuss that. 

It is a large mass of people that is at work at this thing. The 
federal census figures for 1910, just announced, show that we 
have 9,113,614 people. That is just about one-tenth of all the 
people in the forty-eight states and territories and the Dis- 
trict of Columbia. It equals the population of nineteen of these 
rtSifes and territories taken together. It exceeds the population 
of every one of thirty-two independent sovereignties of the world. 
The mass of people is not only large, but it is rapidly growing 
larger. Since the year 1900 there have been 1,844,720 people 
added to our numbers. The number added is about equal to the 
entire population of Maine and Connecticut together, and it 
exceeds by 85,000 the entire population of Delaware, Maine, 
Nevada, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wyoming, all taken 
together. The increase is greater than the population of any one 
of twenty-nine states in 1900, or of any one of twenty-six now. 
It was an increase of more than 25 per cent in the ten years. 
The increase in the whole country is less than 21 per cent. New 
York is growing even more rapidly than the central western 
states. It is a steady growth. We have more than doubled our 
numbers in the last forty years. So we did in the forty years 
before that. Doubtless we will do so again in the next forty 
years. Great numbers from other states and other countries are 
continually casting their lot with us. We have more Jerseyites 



Address before the New York State Teachers Association at Rochester, 
Wednesday evening, December 28, igio. 



IO 

than there are in Trenton, and more of the sons and daughters 
of Connecticut than there are in Hartford. More Massachusetts 
people than there are in Springfield and Worcester together, have 
climbed the fences and trudged the trails towards the lights that 
they have seen over the Berkshires. We have more Irishmen 
than there are in Dublin, more Germans than there are in Ham- 
burg, more Scandinavians than there are in Stockholm, and more 
from beyond the -Baltic and the Adriatic than there are in St 
Petersburg. New York has about as many people as all Canada 
and Cuba together. Great nations are troubled about the num- 
bers of their people going to America. Every nation under the 
sun is making its contribution. More than a million people cross 
the sea every year to find a home in this land of opportunity, 
and millions upon millions more are dreaming of the possibility 
of doing so. New York has had, and will continue to have, the 
brunt, the benefit, and the burden of it. 

All this we must have whether we will or no. So far we have 
been able to turn it to our advantage. The mixing of blood, and 
the mingling of brains, and the bringing together of the noblest 
accomplishments and the highest hopes of all the peoples of the 
earth have warmed, and quickened, and uplifted us. First of 
all, our State has many and great churches ; and they work 
together in fine contrast with the conditions, of which Champlain 
tells us, when Cathoiic and Calvinist " fell to with their fists on 
questions of faith," and when they buried a priest and minister 
in the same grave " to see if they could be quiet together there." 
With early and constant insistence upon religious toleration and 
peace, we have kept in the lead of American commerce and man- 
ufactures. New York has twice as many corporations as any 
other state. In the first year of the federal corporation tax, New 
York paid one-fifth of all the corporation taxes of the country 
and twice as much as any other state. She is very close to the 
heart of the monetary world, and sometimes has reason to sus- 
pect that she is the heart. She has built up the greatest publish- 
ing business in the world; she is doing and writing enough to 
publish; she is turning out artists who put attractive faces upon 
her affairs, poets who sing her praises, and scholars who are let- 
ting her rivals see that she no longer concedes to them the exclu- 
sive privilege of writing her history and fixing her status. She 
is at least contributing quite as much as any other state to the 
scientific research and the professional progress which, associated 



II 

with moral character, is the vital basis of improved living. She 
has no serious rival in the magnitude of her public works and 
utilities, in the extent of her organized benefactions, in the scien- 
tific discrimination with which she cares for her criminal and 
dependent classes. No other society in America has so many 
dead weights ; no other political organization has such strains 
upon its disposition to do and its power to resist. But New York 
is carrying her burden in a brave and sane way, and fighting the 
subtle enemies of her moral life with a heroism that gives her new 
strength and confidence day by day. And, quite as important as 
all the rest, the greater number is coming to have a better appre- 
ciation of the toleration, industry, sense, and heroism which have 
made our history; a surer understanding of the basis of our cul- 
ture ; a keener sense of the value of our opportunities ; and a fuller 
realization of the obligations which each owes to all the others 
in our present society, and to all who may come after. 

With all these factors in the compelling cause ; with full knowl- 
edge that a great free state has legal competency to do what- 
soever it sees fit to do for the uplifting of its people ; and in the 
light of the always enlarging necessities, resources, and political 
independence, we may interpret without difficulty the concern 
about education which the people of the State have somewhat 
expressed in their Constitution and their laws. 

Foremost of all it is the solemn decree of the people of the State of 
New York that every normal child in the State, without any exception 
whatever, shall have an elementary education. The purpose of the 
people of the State of New York in this behalf has steadily grown 
more and yet more determined. It has repeatedly been 
thwarted and the common schools have many times been 
menaced. The effort to found them upon the Constitution had 
been made more than once before 1894, and had failed. When 
the first Constitution was made, popular education had made 
little headway in America, and in New York the English govern- 
ment had persistently blocked all efforts in its behalf. Neverthe- 
less, and notwithstanding the fact that the convention finished its 
work in great haste because of the advance of the British army, 
it is probable that there would have been some recognition of 
its importance in the first Constitution had not John Jay been 
called from the convention by the sudden death of his mother. 
He was the principal author of the instrument, and nine days 
after the Sunday upon which it was adopted he wrote to Gouv- 



12 

erneur Morris and Robert R. Livingston, .expressing his regret 
that he could not have remained to insert a clause " for the sup- 
port and encouragement of literature." It is worth noting that 
the omission of all reference to education in the original Consti- 
tution left the Legislature free to set up the dual system of edu- 
cational administration which continued till 1904. The consti- 
tutional convention of 1801 had but limited powers and they were 
wholly apart from education. The convention of 1821 was fully 
occupied by politics and the canals, and satisfied such educational 
enthusiasm as it had with a provision that the common school 
fund already established " shall be inviolably appropriated and 
applied to the support of common schools throughout this State." 
Of course the State, like all the states, had got no further than 
the encouragement of the people to sustain common schools. The 
convention of 1846 had education thrust upon it, and met the 
subject in a muddled way. Rejecting many propositions for put- 
ting education in the Constitution, it finally adopted these two 
sections : 

The Legislature shall provide for the free education and 
instruction of every child of the State in the common 
schools now established or which shall hereafter be estab- 
lished therein. 

The Legislature shall, at the same time, provide for rais- 
ing the necessary taxes in each school district to carry into 
effect the provisions contained in the preceding section. 

This was rather weak. It left popular education to school 
districts and only empowered the Legislature to authorize such 
taxation for education as the people of the districts should think 
well to impose upon themselves. Weak as it was, the conven- 
tion, for some reason which is not now known, just before 
adjournment reconsidered and struck out even so much. 

The convention of 1867 considered the whole subject seriously, 
for Mr George William Curtis, afterward a Regent and Chan- 
cellor of the University of the State of New York, was chairman 
of the committee on education. The committee recommended 
three propositions : the first related to educational funds and 
Cornell University, and was adopted; the second abolished the 
Board of Regents and unified the educational activities under 
the Superintendent of Public Instruction and a State Board of 
Education, and was defeated ; the third provided that " instruc- 
tion in the common schools and union schools of this State shall 



13 

be free under such regulations as the Legislature shall provide," 
which was stricken out; but later the convention adopted a sec- 
tion in these words : " The Legislature shall provide for the free 
instruction in the common schools of the State, of all persons 
between seven and twenty years of age." It was proposed to 
include a provision for the compulsory attendance, for at least 
three months each year, of every child between seven and thir- 
teen years of age, but the convention refused. However, only so 
much of the work of the convention as related to the judiciary 
was adopted by the people. 

So we see how laboriously the State traveled a rugged and up- 
hill road before coming to the common school section of the Con- 
stitution of 1894. That had come to be a vital step in the out- 
working of our democracy. Nothing but anxiety about the 
rights of each person, and solicitude about the strength and dur- 
ability of our free institutions, could have sustained such per- 
sistent pursuit of the principle, and the words chosen to bolt 
down popular education to the bedrock of the Constitution must 
be deemed to express the very deliberate intentions of the people 
of the State. 

Those words form a new section and are as follows : 

Art. 9. Sec. 1. Common Schools. The Legislature 
shall provide for the maintenance and support of a system 
of free common schools wherein all the children of the 
State may be educated. 

This section brought the constitutional sanction to the legal 
and educational theory already evolved concerning common 
schools. It not only encourages and aids free schools, but obliges 
the Legislature to provide for them ; and not only to provide for 
some schools, but for enough schools so situated as to accommo- 
date all the children of the State; and not merely for enough 
schools, but for schools related together in a system of free com- 
mon schools. It leaves the matter to no uncertainties of local sit- 
uation or feeling. It imposes upon the lawmaking power of the 
State responsibility for a State system of education which shall 
be sufficient and suitable for all the children of the people; and 
it places no limitations upon the grade of education which may 
be provided in common schools. 

It does more. This section has been aptly called the " Children's 
Bill of Rights." It confers a definite, fundamental right to a 
common school education upon every child in the State. It sep- 



14 

arates popular education wholly from the domain of privilege, or 
benevolence, or magnanimity; by inevitable implication it for- 
bids any mingling together of these things ; it places the child's 
right to an education upon a level with his right to life and 
security and liberty and happiness, and makes it as far above 
charity as his right to breathe the air is above the privilege of 
being sent to the poorhouse. 

The child can not enforce this right for himself, and so the 
law undertakes to do it for him. It assumes that in most cases 
his parents will gladly see that he has his rights, but it knows 
that sometimes there are no parents, and that some parents are 
not worth having. It specifies what, at least, he must have as his 
right, and it calls upon all good citizens, and it charges all pub- 
lic magistrates and all officers of the schools, to see that he 
gets it. 

It requires that he shall be in a school where reading, spelling, 
writing, arithmetic, English language, and geography, are taught in 
English during every day that the school is in session, from his 
seventh year, if he lives in a city or in a village of more than five 
thousand people, and from his eighth year if he lives elsewhere in 
the State, and that this shall continue until his fourteenth year is 
reached, in any event, and until his sixteenth year is reached 
unless he is regularly engaged in some useful employment. The 
schools have to be in session at least 160 days each year, and 
must be taught by certificated teachers. If not in a public school, 
then he must have instruction which is equivalent to that provided 
in the public schools. 

It is pitiable to see how many dissolute parents there are who 
are wholly indifferent to the training of their children, and how 
many shiftless ones there are who will keep their children from 
school for trivial work. It is disheartening to learn how many 
merchants and manufacturers will employ children, so far as 
they dare, in violation of law, because the labor is cheap and they 
may thereby enlarge their gains. And it is nauseating to see 
how many officers of the law will barter the rights of children 
for the favor of the unthinking or the corrupt. 

There is no concern of the Empire State that is more imper- 
ative, no direction that is more mandatory, than this. If with 
our great and mixed population and our economic and political 
situations we are to take an indifferent attitude concerning 
attendance at school, there will be small hope. The Education 



i5 

Department offers no apology in any quarter for its insistence 
upon the absolute universality of elementary education. It is the 
injunction of the State. The Commissioner of Education is 
charged by the people and the law with the duty of gathering 
the waifs of the State into the schools, and he will have it done 
so far as he can. It is our business to go into the stores and 
mills and factories, and upon the farms, and into the kitchens 
and cellars and garrets and sweatshops, to find children whose 
bodies and minds and souls are being starved, and give them the 
hand of the law to lead them out of the darkness and into the 
light. The hard circumstances of unfortunate or unnatural 
parents will not dismay us. If there is need of benevolence, let 
the fact be known and charity will do its perfect work. We 
will punish, so far as we can, all employers who, for gain, starve 
the souls of children and menace the stability of the State. We 
will drive from his place, if we can, any superintendent or other 
officer of police, or any committing magistrate, who for any rea- 
son dares to put himself above the law. We need more help and 
better help; interest in the subject ought to be broader and 
keener than it is; dependents and hangers-on will not do for 
attendance officers; all good citizens are asked to cooperate and 
all officers and teachers of the schools are charged to exert every 
effort to enforce the right of every child of the State, without any 
exception, to the simple elements which will give him the open 
chance to live and succeed in our civilization. 

Children will have to take their own chances beyond the " three 
Rs," but so much is not to be left to any chance. Without so 
many grades and so many books and such slow progress as we 
now have ; without so much mixing in of incidental and sub- 
ordinate matters ; without such an atmosphere of theory and 
mystery; these elements of knowledge are to be drilled into every 
child in the State until he has a grip upon them which will never 
let go. When that work is completed, but only then, he may be 
left to his chances. 

There is no avoidance of the fact that, beyond the elementary 
schools, our education has lacked balance. It has been over- 
literary and bookish. It has led overwhelmingly to the profes- 
sions. That has responded to our prevailing ambitions. The 
greater number of rather capable and aggressive spirits have 
sought work that they could do with their heads. What have 
been left of the more aggressive ones have become business 



i6 

leaders ; the others have become hired men. All are fighting for 
chances and profits with hitherto unknown implements of war- 
fare. A good many professionals are learning that they might 
have fared better as foremen, and probably would have had a yet 
happier time as capable workmen. The business leaders are 
insisting that our education is very resultless because it does not 
square with the ways they have invented; and the workmen are 
looking for the education which will relieve their children from 
hand labor, the only thing which they recognize as work, and 
give them more ease and greater rewards. 

Both the good of the State and the right of the child demand 
as much opportunity for training in commercial knowledge and 
in the mechanical and agricultural industries, as in the scientific 
and philosophic branches which lead into the professions ; the 
fundamental principle of our democratic system demands that 
the State shall neither assert nor imply that one employment is 
better than another, because that is a question of individual gifts 
and adaptability; and so long as men and women live, they will 
have to make their elections, stand or fall upon their own inherent 
qualities, and take the consequences. The only plan is equality 
of opportunity, and the only hope is that by reason of this the 
inherent qualities of the people may unfold in the equilibrium 
which gives society the stability that alone can still further 
enlarge the opportunities of all. 

There has been a very decided movement throughout this 
country in recent years in the direction of industrial education. 
New York has led in this movement. The progress has been suf- 
ficient to stir some criticism. There are some precious souls who 
fear that we are in danger of becoming too materialistic; that 
Latin and Greek and poetry and music will fall into disuse, and 
that the people of the State of New York will forget about the 
kinds of learning which relate exclusively to the mind and bear 
upon the things of the spirit. They apprehend, I suppose, that 
there may be shoe shops on Wall street and sawmills on Broad- 
way. They see the time when they may need a doctor and not 
find one, and when their sons may hunger for a church and there 
be none to go to. Let there be no prolongation of distress on this 
account. There is no danger. Our democracy is to be worked 
out both educationally and industrially just as much as it is 
politically and religiously. New York will never relax her grasp 
upon the things which culture the minds and souls of men, but 



17 

it is to be hoped that she will realize better than she has that the 
finest and the deepest culture comes through work; that work 
by the hand and work by the head are yokefellows in our free 
civilization; and that both the rights and the prosperity of her 
people hinge upon the professional and industrial equilibrium 
of her tax-supported education. 

The educational road in New York, it is hoped, will be a 
trunk line, which all the children will be obliged to travel until 
they have the elementary instruments of knowledge and are within 
the possibilities of a self-sustaining vocation; from that point it 
will separate into several branches to which the State attaches 
equal importance and concerning which it affords to every one 
his own free choice. One of these branches will lead to the 
literary, another to the commercial, and another to the industrial 
high school. These branches will in time lead respectively into 
the colleges and the professional schools, into business, and into 
craftsmanship. And about all of the branch lines and all of the 
stations, the State has concern. 

We have been speaking of the rights of the individual in the 
educational opportunities which the State provides. It is fund- 
amental that they shall be equal. If the political power of the plain 
people were not to prevail, the State might proceed upon lines 
and set up institutions that would be without interest, or wholly 
inaccessible, to millions of people. If the State must not 
grant special favors to individuals, it must not allow an influen- 
tial class to shape public education to its exclusive or particular 
advantage. It must have not only the rights, but the interests, 
of all in mind when projecting its educational policies. It must 
not only provide storehouses of learning, but it must make proper 
roads so that the diligent can get to them. There are great 
nations which excel in special knowledge and have many noble 
schools, and yet have things arranged so that only a few favored 
people can have any share in that knowledge or access to those 
schools. Their scholars and statesmen would often deny that, 
and they would deny it with undoubted sincerity. They would 
say that really earnest persons could break their way into the 
upper schools. We do not agree with that: all boys and girls 
who have the latent qualities of great men and women are not 
breaking their way through such walls; often they need to be 
encouraged by bright lights, by open roads, and by a kindly 
face; and very often such encouragement brings out the sanest 



i8 

and strongest characters in a civilization. The open opportunity 
and the encouragement have quite as much to do with it as 
ability and ambition. We not only assert the equal rights of all, 
but we must make arrangements which will get results. 

The results depend not only upon the advanced schools but 
also upon the roads leading to them. The quality and extent of 
all the education of our State is vitally dependent upon what we 
are doing in the advanced schools, and upon the connections 
between the advanced and the middle and lower schools. It is 
not only dependent upon what the advanced school is doing 
within itself, but even more upon its feeling towards the lower 
schools and all the rest of the world. There can be no warmth of 
feeling on the part of the teachers and children in the elementary 
and secondary schools, or on the part of the masses of people, 
towards the advanced schools, unless there is warmth of feeling 
moving in the other direction. If there is a college in America 
that is educationally and socially exclusive, it ought to pull up 
stakes and take its fastidious admirers and go. to a country that is 
socially and politically and educationally more exclusive than 
our country ever will be. It is out of its latitude in America. 
And while a college might do good work upon a somewhat exclu- 
sive basis, a " university " is no university at all except upon the 
basis of freedom of all knowledge, and unless it has wide gate- 
ways and gives cordial welcome to all sincere students. Happily 
there are few very exclusive colleges and universities in America 
and probably none in the State of New York. 

But New York has never done much for her colleges in any 
general way, and while they have done a great deal for the peo- 
ple of the State, it is clear enough that the State ought to be 
much more concerned about their doing a great deal more. 
Unless the colleges and universities are made freer to the most 
deserving youth of the State, and unless the higher learning 
permeates all the schools on more rational lines than it has yet 
done, the State will find itself at a decided educational disad- 
vantage with states whose people have proved themselves wiser 
than we are. And colleges and universities must have more help 
before they can do more than they are doing. They not only 
need to have more money, but they must be made to know 
what they are wanted to do. If a whole people wants something 
done, the way will be found for doing it. To put it in another 
way, no young man should be kept from a school of any grade 



19 

merely because he dare not assume responsibility for the tuition 
fees. This is far from saying that all who might apply should 
be accepted in every school. Doubtless too many who can 
pay fees are accepted now. Serious purpose and ability to do the 
work, rather than length of the pocketbook, should be the 
requirements for admission. Right there is where the state uni- 
versity has an advantage over the endowed university. In the 
state university no one is kept out because his wallet is short, 
and no one has to be kept in because the university is unwilling 
to affront a donor, to humiliate a social circle, or to lose tuition 
fees. Nor is it wholly a matter of individual right or opportunity. 
The strength of the universities and the very vital interests of 
society are dependent upon poor and eager students with ability 
to do the work, being brought into the universities. The fact that 
they are short of money may be a real advantage to them, and 
the qualities which they bring from homes close to the soil are 
more than likely to be of real advantage to learning and to 
society. 

The State itself, as well as some of the people of the State, is 
concerned about the matter. All of the people and all of the 
educational activities of a State are bound together. Learning 
not only needs the stimulus which new blood and outside ambi- 
tion may give it, but the State will find its strongest support in 
the distribution throughout every town of men and women who 
have been educated in institutions of the higher learning as a 
part of the policy of the State. This is as desirable in an old 
state as in a new one; in thickly settled as in thinly settled 
territory; in New York as in Michigan, or Nebraska, or Colorado. 
And there is no older state in the Union which might not well 
modify a rather common impression about what real education 
is and about the pressing need of it in the more economical and 
efficient management of the businesses it is carrying on. Ac- 
cepted educational policies, with settled traditions and millions 
of money behind them, mightily affect the lives of states. It is 
vital that the influence be a sane and salutary one. To be sane 
and salutary, it must come from, and react upon, the whole people 
rather than an exclusive part of the people. 

Our public education must be balanced; must apply to life and pro- 
mote work, and this must include public life and public zvorks as well 
as the rest. Our life is complex and our work multifarious. We 
can not train for every situation in life and for everything that 



20 

is to be done. But we can carry pupils so far on differentiated 
lines, from which they may select, that they may catch sight of 
real opportunity and catch hold of the things that are to be 
done. To have it so is even more important to the state than 
to the individual. The management of our railroads is a great 
business which bears often and heavily upon all of us. The rail- 
roads have been managed by " practical " men, frequently in 
uneducated, extravagant, and too often in dishonest ways. The 
roads need to be managed by men who are either thoroughly 
educated in the physical sciences and the philosophy of finance 
that are inseparable from practical experience in the operations 
of any such great business, or who will call to their aid, and defer 
to the judgment of, men who are so educated. And it is to be 
hoped that it is gradually penetrating their minds that railroading 
is as dependent as any other great business upon the common 
moralities. It was said the other day by an experienced man, 
speaking from a responsible place, that he could tell the railroads 
of the country how they might save a million dollars a day. 
Generalizations are dangerous. But scientific knowledge, asso- 
ciated with practical experience, and undoubted honesty, and a 
real concern about individual rights and the best public service, 
might not only save a half million a day, but gain the roads a 
new share in the appreciation and support of the people, which 
would more than make up the other half million. And as these 
things enter into railroading, so craftsmanship enters into manu- 
facturing, and the training of both hand and mind enters into 
craftsmanship. So it is with banking and mining and road- 
making and agriculture, and with every large business interest of 
our marvelous State. The western states are calling scholarship 
to the help of their business activities more than we are. We will 
very likely do it more and more, and it is well to remind our- 
selves that the way to hasten and enlarge this is to lose no time 
in training an abundance of " practical," industrial, and business 
scholarship which will create the needs and have an ear open to 
all the calls. 

The education that is needed in personal and corporate busi- 
ness is preeminently needed in the doings of the cities and vil- 
lages and in the business of the State itself. For example, think 
of the appalling waste in putting up buildings, in putting down 
pavements, and in laying out sewage and water systems, through 
bungling methods and the use of improper materials and defective 



21 

specifications. I am not thinking of any lack of honesty about it, 
for it seems to me that the average of honesty in official life is as 
high as, and probably higher than, out of it. Nor do I overlook 
the fact that public business is often and necessarily subject to 
hindrances and increased cost to which private affairs do not 
have to submit. I am thinking only of the fact that the carrying 
out of such public works is the exclusive business of thoroughly 
educated and experienced architects and engineers, and that the 
control is too often in the hands of men who know little about 
such matters and make the sorry mistake of thinking that they 
appear to be stronger men when they refuse to admit it. The 
same thing is as true in infinite ways of the business of the State, 
as of the pavements and sewage systems of the cities and villages ; 
probably it is not so much so of the public buildings, the barge- 
canal and the highways, because these works are so very great 
that they have of necessity passed into the hands of professional 
experts ; but it is no overstating of what every one knows to say 
that very much of the business of the State would be better and 
more economically done if it could have the service of more 
thoroughly educated men. It mitigates but little to say that the 
situation has improved; it has improved just enough to show that 
it needs to improve a great deal more, and the only way to 
improve it more is to educate the men who will condemn the 
plans which they know to be defective and the practices which 
they know to be bad. The great need of the business of the 
State, as of the subdivisions thereof, is the aid of more educated 
men, and the only hope of the State is in the fact that we already 
have so many of them. If all the people of the State could be 
trained in the knowledge that work which can be well done by 
none but experts must be committed to experts alone, and that 
this applies to the work of administrative officers and to that of 
legislators, as well as to that of architects and engineers, the State 
would advance by leaps and bounds and immediately become a 
model for every other state in the Union. 

And there is occasion enough for the State to be much concerned about 
its professional life generally. There are other professions than 
architecture and engineering, and there are at least two — medi- 
cine and law — upon which the happiness of our people and the 
stability of our civilization are even more dependent. It is 
wholly within the facts to say that New York has done more than 
any other state to assure preliminary education and expert train- 



22 

ing in these professions. She is doing more, and doing it more 
decisively, all the time. But she is not going half far enough. 
At least, the conditions are more than twice as bad as she can 
afford to permit them to be. There is a philosophic basis for law ; 
it rests upon conscience and it has been shaped by human experi- 
ence ; and yet it has become so perverted and beclouded by in- 
competent or vicious lawyers, and legal procedure has become 
so cumbersome, that the ordinary man will submit to wrong 
because he dare not intrust his just rights to attorneys and courts, 
for he knows that the result, no matter what it may be, will not 
warrant the cost in time, money, and humiliation. 

The situation in medicine is even worse than in law. There is 
a scientific basis for medicine. It has been found in recent years 
and has come to be very exact. Many of the older physicians 
have made studious application of it to their experience, and 
scientific study coupled with experience becomes doubly reliable 
and useful. Thousands of younger men have been and are being 
fundamentally and thoroughly trained in it. Yet there are thou- 
sands of men in this State who are certified to be professionally 
competent to have the issues of human life and death in their 
hands, when they have no grasp whatever upon what the scien- 
tific world knows about the cause of disease and the means of 
cure, and they go blundering and bluffing along, with hideous 
results that make intelligent laymen shudder. What must intelli- 
gent physicians think, and why don't they speak more emphati- 
cally? Is there any relief? Yes, qualifiedly, but only in a long 
time in any event. It does not need large imagination to believe 
that there would be some trouble about requiring all lawyers and 
physicians who are more than thirty years of age to take the 
Regents preliminary examinations, and then the professional ex- 
aminations, and abide the result. It is easier to head off young- 
sters than to reform veterans. All men and women have the right 
to aspire, but society must protect itself. It seems to be moving 
in the right directions, but not fast enough or hard enough. The 
growth of the State and the changes in conditions outstrip our 
efforts. There are two or three times too many lawyers and 
physicians of one grade or another, for their own or the public 
good. The examinations should exclude twice or thrice as many 
as they do. Frauds upon the professional examinations might 
well be punished by imprisonment; certainly by permanent exclu- 
sion from a profession. All schools of law and medicine oper- 



23 

ating for personal gain ought to be suppressed. There are schools 
enough which are operating or which may operate for educa- 
tional ends alone ; they should be upheld and the rest put down. 

The concern of the State about this large educational matter 
demands that the fine characters, the educated and honorable men 
with whom the legal and medical professions are abundantly sup- 
plied, shall be the first and go the farthest to bring their great 
professions out of the prejudicial situations into which modern 
scientific knowledge and new economic conditions have forced 
them. With that help, the duties of the State Education Depart- 
ment in this behalf will be relatively easy; without it, it will be 
very hard to attain measurable relief and reform. 

Erroneous standards menace education. With so many to express 
opinions and so many propositions to deal with, it is hard to 
come to conclusions and sometimes difficult to distinguish be- 
tween true and false valuations. Of course, the universal human 
ambition has abundant opportunity in America. There are 
evangelists, agitators, speculators, even " plungers," in education. 
New York knows very well that we have a complex civilization, 
and that the slender education available to the masses two or 
three generations ago will not suffice now. The fundamentals 
of education have changed but little; the mind and its processes 
are much the same. The change is in the enlargement of educa- 
tional opportunity to more people. If the opportunity is to avail 
much to them they will have to be trained in a few things at a 
time; in the few things that will give them the power to do for 
themselves; and it will have to be done in an exact and not a 
confused way. The great drawback to the education of our day 
is confusion of mind, of theories, of values, and of processes. 
There is a political menace to education ; there are men and 
women who seek to attract a following in order to advance them- 
selves. There is a business menace to education ; men and women 
invent educational schemes to make money. There is a benevo- 
lent menace to education ; people often weaken educational instru- 
mentalities in mistaken efforts to do good. There is a social 
menace to education ; there are people who insist that gabble and 
jewels and audacity and straining the King's English shall be 
taken for learning. But there is no menace to nineteen-twentieths 
of our education, to all that is done in the primary and secondary 
schools, so serious as the demand that almost everything shall be 
taught at once to children of all ages; and this is particularly so 



24 

when what is attempted is supported by pedagogical and psycho- 
logical theories that many common people feel obliged to take 
seriously through fear of being thought unlearned. Surely enough 
there is need to return to the " simple life " in education as in 
many other ways. The State of New York is disposed to open 
all manner of educational roads to all people; but she is justified 
in insisting that the roads shall have some reasonable purpose, 
shall have good grades and go somewhere, shall not be laid out 
in circles for the hilarity of pleasure-seekers, shall not be endan- 
gered by pitfalls and precipices, and shall not run into squirrel 
tracks and end in the tops of the trees. Of all things, we need in 
the lower schools fewer branches, taught more systematically and 
until there is a definite result. Research and experimentation 
are very necessary; a life given to investigation is not a dear price 
to pay for a grain of new truth; but let the work be done by men 
of scientific training, and let it be carried on in the classrooms 
and laboratories of the universities where the subjects will be 
guinea pigs, or where the seasoned humans who are being ex- 
perimented upon will not take it overseriously and so will not 
be harmed by it. 

Of course the main educational concern of New York is that her 
people shall be trained in common honesty. Where that is accom- 
plished, much of the other training takes care of itself; if it is 
not assured, the other training is of little avail. There has in 
recent years been much discussion of the means and methods of 
moral education. It has been widely assumed that there has 
been special need of it because people have become particularly 
dishonest. I suspect that this impression is due to a moral quick- 
ening that has become quite apparent in most parts of the world,, 
quite as much as to more dishonesty and crime. Opportunity 
and publicity have had something to do with producing this im- 
pression. Probably the quest for gain or the purpose to get even 
has had more to do with it. The man who shoes my horses uses 
iron tempered to wear only ten days when it should go twenty 
days; he does it to make me buy shoes twice as often as I used 
to do. That is not because he intends to be dishonest, but because 
he is trying to recoup against the iron men and the transportation 
companies, or he is trying to get even with the butcher and the 
grocer. He copies the methods of others. It is useless for me 
to go to another shop, because all horseshoers have bound them- 
selves together to do the same thing. And they have copied the 



25 

methods of the ironmasters and railroad men and all the rest, 
not only in the enlargement of profits, but also in the avoidance 
of competition. Nor is that all : if I were to find a way to get 
horseshoes that were better tempered and would last longer, the 
blacksmiths' union would doubtless appeal to the Legislature for 
some sort of a law that would stop me from doing so, because 
they would reason that that would be the method of the corpora- 
tions. In that they would not be far from the fact. It is col- 
lectivity against individualism, too much aided by the laws of the 
country. It is not because the blacksmith is dishonest; it is 
because he thinks it is his only way to get on, and doubtless he 
fears that tomorrow a great corporation will be organized to cut 
prices until it gets control of all the horseshoeing in the city. 
He is going on the principle of the college freshman who 
" swipes " a sophomore hat to get square for the slight offense 
of having his diminutive mustache removed. Whatever the 
theory, there is danger in it. It is not so bad among college boys. 
It is not so horribly bad for me : I can subsist. It is bad for the 
blacksmith to deceive one who gives him work. To do less for 
me than he pretends to do for the money I pay him tends to make 
him a dishonest man. The same is of course true of the iron- 
master and the railroad manager and the packer and the butcher. 
It is not true of them alone. Men with many of the finest quali- 
ties often resort to questionable methods, and the masses imitate 
their methods in order to have some part in their success or in order 
to prevent being altogether destroyed by their overreaching and 
ingenuity. 

We have been passing through an era of studied attempt by 
the seller to mislead the buyer through subtle and sneaking 
methods, in order to make inordinate gains. It has entered into 
our commercial affairs until the thing is pretty nearly universal. 
Associated with the propensity for organization, it is warping the 
thinking and menacing the moral character of the great and 
small, high and low, rich and poor, alike. It is not admitted to 
be dishonest, but the separating wall is not a very high one. It 
is certainly degrading. It is true that there are offsets. Inde- 
pendence, benevolence, public spirit, all the means of both intel- 
lectual and moral culture, are abundant. But no system of 
debits and credits will justify compromises in moral matters. 
The State which goes before all others in merchandise and com- 
merce and banking is more concerned about the moral tone of her 



26 

business life than about literature and science and music and 
charities and public works, all taken together. Culture is always 
associated with native honesty because integrity engages in works 
which make for culture, but literature and music and all of the 
external accomplishments may be made the attractive cover of 
meanness and the efficient instruments of evil. 

Then let us summarize for the concluding word. It is the con- 
cern of New York that every child in the State who is fourteen 
years old shall be able to read and write; that the industrial pur- 
suits shall have equality of educational opportunity with the 
professional; that all the people of the State shall have the equal 
chance, and therefore free education and liberty of selection to the 
limits of their needs, their merits, and their attainments; that in 
the lower schools, at least, no more shall be attempted than can 
be completely done, and that there shall be less experimenting, 
less confusion, and more exact results ; that all of the desirable 
factors in our complex civilization and our common life shall 
have equitable support from our collective efforts; that whatever 
is done shall accord with the scientific knowledge and the bal- 
anced thinking of the world without obligation to use or to prove 
all of it in all grades of schools ; that the ignorance and incompe- 
tence and dishonesty in professions certified by the State to be 
learned shall be materially reduced ; that the standards of learn- 
ing shall be true and high ; and that cheerful and tolerant moral 
character shall go before all else. 

Education that has life and enters into life ; education that 
makes a living and makes life worth living; education that can 
use English to express itself; education that does not assume that 
a doctor must be an educated man, while a mechanic or a farmer 
can not be; education that trains children in cleanness, obedience, 
respect, exactness, proficiency, that requires every one to think for 
himself and yet tolerate adverse opinions, that holds out to every 
one a fair chance but makes him know that he must earn by hard 
work all the success he is likely to have, and that drills into every 
one the vital fact that there is no success worth having except on 
the basis of truth and justice; education that appeals to the masses, 
and makes better citizens and a nobler State; education that sup- 
ports the imperial position of the State, inspires rational education 
in all of the states, and exalts democracy in all the world ; that is the 
education that concerns New York. 



INHERENT ELEMENTS OF POWER IN A 
SYSTEM OF SCHOOLS 



INHERENT ELEMENTS OF POWER IN A SYSTEM OF 

SCHOOLS 

It is true in a peculiar sense that the State of New York has a 
" system of schools." The Constitution provides not merely for 
schools, but for a " system of free common schools." The term 
common schools does not mean elementary schools alone, but high 
schools as well ; schools of whatever grade, to which all the people 
have relations that are alike or common. A university may easily 
be, and in America often is, a common school, the capstone of a 
system of common schools. But our system of common schools 
did not grow out of the Constitution. It grew up out of the his- 
tory of the State, indeed, out of history that was made before there 
was a State ; it entered into the policy and progress of the State 
until it forced itself into the Constitution. Above all and before all 
the states, and in advance of any constitutional sanction, New York 
bound her schools together into a state system. In 1784 she passed 
the initial legislation for binding colleges and academies together 
in the " University of the State of New York " ; in 1795 she made 
the initial appropriation for binding the common schools together 
in a system; in 1812 she created the office of State Superintendent 
of Common Schools. No other state had then thought of such 
epoch-making steps as these. And these steps were only the first 
in the process of concentration. There have been many 
others. The course of the Regents as to the advanced schools ; the 
supervisory and directory and judicial powers of the Superinten- 
dent of Public Instruction ; the creation of the State school funds, 
both elementary and academic ; the always enlarging State ap- 
propriations to schools that complied with the requirements of the 
system; the academic examinations; the central control over the 
certification of teachers ; the teachers uniform examinations ; the 
examinations for admission to the professions ; the State courses 
and syllabuses of study ; the steadily enlarging activities of the two 
State educational departments ; then their compulsory unification ; 
and now the new Education Law and the new State Education 
Building, are only the more important links that have bound the 



Address before the Associated Academic Principals of New York State 
at Syracuse, Thursday evening, December 29, 1910. 



30 

schools of the State into a system more highly concentrated than 
obtains in any other state. 

In this system almost two millions of young people are now being 
taught by more than fifty thousand teachers. The cost is enormous, 
but the people pay it cheerfully. The ends in view are of the 
very highest importance to the happiness of the people and the 
prosperity of the State. What are the inherent elements which 
such a great system must have to accomplish these ends? We are 
officers and teachers of this system of schools. We have much 
to do with making its character and shaping its course. Many 
of us have been associated with it for a long time. It is only fair 
to assume that there is not one of us who would not make reason- 
able sacrifices for it. Let us put the question to ourselves. Let 
us try to answer it with all honesty and as intelligently as we can. 
I wish you might frame the answers. I will have to do it, but 
if my answers are not correct, you may mark me down on them. 
In some way let us get at the answers that will stand the tests 
among nine millions of people, and that may be distinctly self- 
assertive before the educational opinion of the world. 

Of course it is fundamental that a system of schools must have 
public confidence. The people who support it must believe in what 
it is doing. It must appeal to their interests, and in ways that they 
will understand. This does not mean that every one, everywhere, 
must understand and believe in it. It does not even mean that 
every hamlet or district must intelligently sympathize with it. That 
would be too much to expect. Right there is the strength of a 
system of schools, over a school. But the prevailing public opin- 
ion and the common feeling of the state must sustain it strongly, 
and local feeling must ordinarily do so. A school system can do 
nothing without that, and can have it only by deserving it. 

A school system must have the self-respect and the assertive- 
ness which are in part dependent upon being decently housed and 
suitably provided for. In a prosperous state its accommodations 
must steadily improve. They must keep up with the advancing 
standards of living. The schoolhouses must steadily advance in 
dignity and healthfulness and attractiveness. We have unique 
central powers to compel this, but they are exercised conservatively 
and with regret, for it is much better that the city or district 
which must bear the expense, shall upon its own motion build or 
improve a schoolhouse. Ordinarily it does so. If not, a sugges- 
tion is generally enough. We are doing very well in this behalf. 



3i 

Last year the cities, villages and districts of the State expended 
$5,816,828.42 for enlarging and improving school accommodations. 
But the building itself is not all. Cleanliness and attractiveness, 
outside and inside, are quite as important. Teachers will have 
to fight for this, and it is worth fighting for. A good schoolhouse, 
and above all, a clean one, stirs the pride of the people and quickens 
all the good impulses of the school. But the school must have 
the qualities which command respect and make it seem at home 
in such a house. 

No system of schools can have power without scholarship that 
is steadily growing stronger. Of course the aggregate of scholar- 
ship does grow stronger in our system. But does it relatively, 
commensurately ? Has the scholarship of our school system kept 
pace with the growth of the State and the enlargement in the 
expense? Has it kept in the front rank of the scholarship of the 
country? Has scholarship of the first rank been diffused through 
all grades of schools in New York as it might have been and is 
bound to be? Have we gone before other states in deepening it, 
extending it, and in diffusing it through all the schools? 

These questions are both hard and delicate. I make no implica- 
tions against the great body of teachers. As a class, they are 
the most conscientious people in the world. The sacrifices which 
they very commonly make for self-improvement force one to in- 
quire whether their eagerness for knowledge might not be better 
satisfied in some other way, and whether the kind of training which 
the leaders of education are giving them is of the most worth. 

The fact is, and it may as well be stated bluntly, that it has come 
to be very difficult to get the needed men and women of really first- 
rate scholarship in either the State Education Department or in 
the schools. It is saying nothing against the State Education De- 
partment to say that it needs more men and women of good strong 
scholarship. There are nearly three hundred of us there. The 
minor vacancies are filled well enough under the civil service laws 
by boys and girls freshly from the high schools. In the course 
of time they become proficient in routine and their compensation 
reaches somewhere from six to nine hundred dollars per year. 
Only the exceptional few ever come to carry responsibility inde- 
pendently. The greater number never gain either general or 
special scholarship, or reliable and independent scholarship. They 
have to be content with humble work and small pay. Vacancies 
in most of the important positions have to be filled under the 
civil service laws, and it is going none too far to say that this gen- 



32 

erally hinders and often prevents us from securing new men and 
women of really first-class training and ability, for they are occu- 
pied, are not often looking for places, and if they are willing to 
think of making a change in situation they will not sign applica- 
tions and enter examinations because they do not want their pres- 
ent employers to know that they are willing to make a change in 
employment, nor do they wish to accept the chances and the con- 
sequences of not getting first place in a competition. 

The Civil Service Commissioners try to be helpful to us, but, 
for obvious reasons, hesitate to assume the responsibility which 
I think the law expects them to take in connection with high grade 
positions in the education service. They are trying to prove that 
practically all positions, no matter how high or expert, may be best 
filled by competition. That is not always true. It is never true un- 
less there are enough candidates of first-class ability whose eager- 
ness for appointment is sufficient to dispose them to watch for an- 
nouncements of civil service examinations and enter the competi- 
tions. There is always a lack of such candidates for really expert 
service. If the higher positions in the State education service are 
not expert, there are none that are. If that is not established by 
reason, it is established by the fact that we have to search for candi- 
dates, urge them to enter the competition, and in the end often 
fail to get a civil service eligible list which meets our needs. 
Scholarship and expertness are above announcing themselves as 
seeking an opportunity to work, and they refuse the humiliation 
that is involved in competition. Reputation has been earned by 
things accomplished, is not expressed in examinations, and is not 
willing to submit to the determinations of commissions that may 
not be expert at all or, at least, not in the subject to be passed upon. 
Therefore, when the high places are subjected to competition, the 
result is bad. Some think that this must necessarily be suffered in 
order to keep the rabble out of lower grade places. I do not 
think so. 

Civil service laws and the methods of their application must not 
only keep the unworthy from all places, but they must provide ways 
for filling the high places with the most capable appointees. It 
seems to me that the way to do this is to afford the appointing 
officer perfect freedom to search out desirable appointees for expert 
places; to negotiate with them and to tender positions subject to 
subsequent approval, if that is thought necessary, by the Civil 
Service Commission. There is little reason in forcing the Com- 
missioner of Education, whose appointments have to be confirmed 



33 

by the Board of Regents, to take anything less than the best he 
can get. A university could not be operated upon that plan; 
neither can the State Education Department. In the meantime, 
our service is being leveled down rather than leveled up, while the 
Commission is trying to prove what will probably never be proved 
at all. With only a few rare exceptions, the best scholarship of 
the Department is found in the small number of places which are 
exempt from competition or in places filled by promotion examina- 
tion within the Department, and not in competition with place- 
seekers from the outside. Often we need new blood from the 
outside. So we must seek relief through amendment to the civil 
service law or through strengthening our own scholarship. Pos- 
sibly we may do both. The latter course is upon the line of 
least resistance and it is also in the line of our business. All seem 
disposed to go about it. We have the implements to do it with, 
and in the new Education Building we shall have the accommoda- 
tions, the conveniences, and the influences through which to do 
it. We intend to be worthy of that new building, and, although 
the ambition is a high one, we intend to have the attributes which 
will be up to the plane of it and appear at home in it. But we can 
wait no longer than we must, and we are bound to seek every 
means from every quarter that will avail us. And the need of 
other means is much broader than the necessities of the Education 
Department because it extends to all the schools. In the schools, 
however, the civil service laws do not prevail. 

It is saying nothing severe upon the teaching body to say that 
it is altogether impossible to get enough new men and women of 
good strong scholarship to meet the needs of the schools. It is, 
for well-known reasons, more difficult to get such men than such 
women, and it is quite as important that the teaching of the State 
shall not be given over to women, as it would be, if there were any 
danger, that it should not be given over to men. And I am not 
going to pretend that the whole difficulty is about getting new men 
of first rank as teachers ; there is trouble enough with some men 
long in the service. Men who have been long in the schools may 
fairly be classified in three sections. There are too many who 
merely stay with the organization, and are respectable enough to 
keep from being shaken off by any gentle means. We all 
dislike harsh means. They read and write and cipher a little, but 
never get into the rich things of life, and never mix much with 
people who do things. They are able to maintain routine, and they 
make themselves believe, and sometimes make some other people 



34 

believe, that routine is scholarship. When they are not resenting 
the small pay of teachers they are thinking about pensions, and there 
is occasion enough for it. Of course, when the schools must depend 
upon such, the schools are in a sorry plight. Then there are men 
who are able to capitalize absurdities. They can interest conven- 
tions in novelties and get into the prints by freakishness. They 
discuss such things as whether kittens kill mice through inherited 
instinct or by reason of maternal training; and whether male kit- 
tens develop feline ferocity earlier than female kittens, and which 
have the more of it at adolescence ; and they have scientific reasons 
to explain why cats run towards mice and women run away from 
them. Ordinary people can not avoid the suspicion that some of 
these gentlemen are not very profoundly trained in the physiolog- 
ical or psychological sciences and that they feel called upon to 
make up in solemnity what they lack in profundity. And, worst of 
all, scientific investigation and deduction are not left to scientific 
men in the laboratories of the universities, but unoffending 
teachers and helpless pupils in the lower schools have little pro- 
tection against the more superficial of the " scientists " ; there is no 
one there to confute them and they are very free to experiment 
and confuse without accomplishing any good. Of course, if the 
school had to depend upon mere agitators, the situation would be 
a hapless one. 

But happily there are others. They carry routine steadily and 
gather knowledge which applies to life. Without pedantry and 
presumption, they mingle with people and associate in affairs. 
Along with the routine and along with their social relations, they 
gain interest in a particular thing and pursue it rather systemat- 
ically. That makes scholarship. A college training is an admirable 
thing, but there may be scholarship without it. No teacher need be 
long in the schools without becoming a scholar, if the term is to 
be defined rationally. There is no better definition of education 
than that it is knowing something about a great many things and 
knowing a great deal about something. To say nothing of the 
training which went before the examinations and the certificate, 
service in the schools is the ready means of general culture ; and 
systematic reading or study may surely equip a teacher to say the 
final word upon something that is worth knowing and that not many 
will know very well. The pleasure of that is exceeded only by the 
power which the commonness of it must give to a system of schools. 
And the hope of educational progress is to be realized through 
upholding the arms and enlarging the number of teachers who do 
it. 



35 

But the teaching in our system can not be sufficiently quickened 
from within. It needs to be reinforced from the colleges much 
more than it is. The existing situation is in the way of it. 
Teachers are not paid enough to entitle the schools to the first grade 
of scholarship, and, even if that were not so, the colleges will have 
to be more united and interested, will have to be less given to merely 
upbuilding themselves and more given to public service, and will 
have to appeal to and train more men and women who are attracted 
to teaching, before the situation will be materially improved. 

Our New York colleges and universities are mostly endowed. 
Such as are not endowed are municipal and have only a local 
constituency. Endowed colleges are not very closely related to 
the common schools. It is not because they do not want to be, but 
because in the nature of things they can not be. They are naturally, 
and perhaps necessarily, very independent of taxpayers. State 
colleges are part and parcel of the common school system. They 
express the democratic advance in education. In 1888 the attend- 
ance at fifteen of the prominent endowed colleges of the country 
was 9980, and in 1908 it was 26,893. I n J 888 the attendance at 
fifteen of the State colleges was 7952, and in 1908 it was 42,859. 
In 1898 the attendance at forty-six endowed colleges or universities 
was 36,907, and in 1908 it was 53,532. In 1898 the attendance at 
forty-six state colleges was 34,653, and in 1908 it was 70,013. Now 
remember that each of the state universities had accredited all of the 
good high schools of the state after it had brought them into articu- 
lating relations with itself, that students passed back and forth, 
between high school and college, with nothing to hinder, and that in 
each state university there was a free school of education and 
summer terms for teachers ; and you will begin to see how the 
college influence is made to permeate the high schools of some other 
states more freely than it is able, or is likely, to do here, without 
some radical change in our plans. 

This marvelous development of democratic universities is a 
movement of the very first importance in world education. It is 
decidedly influencing, and in a measure determining, the type of 
university which will be accepted here and abroad as the American 
university, because it is the natural product of our political, our 
religious, and our industrial democracy. While this great move- 
ment is profoundly influencing popular education in all the newer 
states by reason of the fact that it is both a product of our civiliza- 
tion and a part of the civilization's school system, the older 
states have both opposed its plan and refused to do anything which 
might do for themselves what it is doing for the newer states. 



36 

It is more than doubtful if any of the older states will ever 
develop great free universities on the same lines and with the same 
relations as in the newer states. There is a sufficient reason why it is 
even more doubtful in the case of New York than of the other older 
states. That reason appears in the existence of the University of 
the State of New York. It is a reason which is not as well under- 
stood as it ought to be. That is mainly because the term university 
now carries to the popular mind a different manner of institution 
from that of the University of the State of New York. But the 
Legislature used the term advisedly and properly before it was 
used in any other sense in this country and before there was any 
other university of any kind in America. There has been no need 
for changing the legitimate use of the term because it has since 
been used to describe something else. The University of the State 
of New York is a real university. It exercises the power of the 
State in chartering and supervising higher institutions of learning. 
It gets its strength from them when they have any strength to 
spare. It regulates them if they go wrong, and it administers what 
little is left of their estates when they die. In a word, it is the 
conservator of the higher learning and the bond of union between 
the advanced schools. It seeks to make that bond stronger. This 
University is here to stay. One hundred and ten years after it 
was created by the Legislature it was established in the Constitution. 
It has to do with more than the higher learning and the advanced 
schools. It is a part of the State Education Department. Its 
Board of Regents now projects and directs the educational policies 
of the State. They are trying to bind the higher and the middle 
and the lower schools in a more mutually helpful union. 
They are making the most of the fact that the schools of dif- 
ferent grades in a system are interdependent; they are applying 
the principle that, in education, he who gives most gets most, 
and that meanness defeats itself. It would seem as though one 
very natural way in which to have the New York colleges and uni- 
versities do more for the New York primary and secondary schools, 
in some such way as the state universities are doing for the schools 
below them, is to create a good number of New York State Uni- 
versity scholarships in all the State colleges and universities, the 
expense of which shall be met by the State, and to provide definite 
methods which will encourage benefactors to enlarge the number. 
This has already been well considered by the higher institutions 
and a plan has been formulated and is ready for introduction in 
the Legislature. 



37 

Now I have the right to ask that this and any similar proposition 
shall not be obscured by the fact that I was for ten years associated 
with a state university. It is to be hoped that my experiences have 
led me to see some things more clearly than I otherwise would 
have done. But it would be absurd to imagine that this proposition 
arises out of personal experience and nothing more. That would be 
putting the cart ahead of the horse. I was, to my surprise, called 
to the University of Illinois, first by the faculty and then by a 
board of trustees politically opposed to me, because I was a demo- 
crat and not an aristocrat in education. My association with a 
state university is not a matter of as much significance as a fly 
on the great wheel that is grinding out a new manner and a new 
measure of education in the mammoth mill of American democracy. 
Moreover, I have not proposed to establish a state university on 
western lines in New York. It would not be difficult to get support 
for that proposition. But I have definitely proposed not to do it. 
On the other hand, my proposition is to use the State organization 
which we have, to conserve the universities and colleges of the 
State, and to bind all together upon a plan which in the end may 
work out larger results than a state university of the western type 
would ever be likely to do in this State. 

But let our vision not be clouded. There is something of much 
moment, educationally, going on among the American people. That 
something is sending many thousands of students that average 
neither very rich nor very poor, just ordinary American boys and 
girls, to state universities which cost millions upon millions of 
dollars of taxpayers' money, and without any opposition from any 
quarter. That something is not only moving the people, but it is 
entering into the policies and practices of states. That something 
will in some way create a large opportunity and have a large outlet 
in New York. Scholarship in this State is not only going to be 
much uplifted, but much more widely diffused. None should 
oppose it ; all should help it ; the scholarship of the State should 
not leave the free democracy of the people to break its way through 
barriers at a hazard. On the contrary, scholarship should exact 
scholarship in the State Education Department and in all positions 
of influence in the system of schools. Scholarship should divest 
itself of irrational notions of what scholarship is. And then scholar- 
ship should lay out the roads over which democracy may advance 
more easily to the greater happiness of many more of the people, 
and to absolute equality of educational opportunity for all. 



38 

I am not unconscious of my personal relations, as well as of my 
official responsibility about this matter, nor am I unmindful of 
the qualifications required for meeting that responsibility in a com- 
plete and perfect manner. I have never posed as a scholar. I 
have little patience with men who do. The scientific study of fish is 
scholarly work and highly important but no more so than the study 
of the progress of civilizations. Engineering is as scholarly as 
bug-hunting. One acquires scholarship through learning to read 
ancient languages, even though the ability to do so be lost for lack 
of use; but does no scholarship result from studying the history 
and the intendments of the constitutions of one's country? And if 
studiousness be acquired, does it matter when and where it be 
acquired? Without the largest opportunities, and possibly without 
the strongest purposes in the beginning, and yet with some oppor- 
tunities and some purpose, I taught school four years and practised 
law for fifteen; and in my maturer years have not been without 
the advantages of opportunity, experience, and position. I have 
had active relations with important affairs and with large enter- 
prises ; have pursued special reading rather persistently ; and have 
studied continuously for twenty-five years the needs, the organiza- 
tion, and the processes of schools. Study, associated with affairs; 
study, incited and influenced by occupation, is more profitable than 
either study or vocation when not associated together. In the 
meantime, I have been chosen Commissioner of Education of the 
first State in the Union during good behavior or for as long a time 
as I meet the responsibilities of the place in a satisfactory way. 
That calls for the turning over of a new leaf. Out of it all, I am 
conscious of strength enough to meet the new opportunity to turn 
over a new leaf and write a new declaration for the guide of my 
official conduct. That declaration is that hereafter in a still larger 
measure than heretofore, preference and precedence in the Edu- 
cation Department, and in the schools, so far as my influence goes, 
shall go to those who, in addition to having the strongest character 
and the best balanced intelligence, are continuous, persistent, and 
diligent students of some subject which is of weight in giving 
further uplift to our system of schools. The highest peaks in 
learning are difficult of attainment. Mediocrity and indifference 
never reach them. But we have got to the point now where we 
must have many more people who have the strength and the 
ambition to gain those heights, and thereby acquire the right to 
say pretty nearly the last word upon something that is of real 



39 

importance to the intellectual progress of a vast population and an 
imperial State. Preference, in the Education Department and out, 
will be given to those who do this; and, if necessary, the way will 
be found to create the openings which will give them the oppor- 
tunity. 

No system of schools can have much power without a great 
deal of freedom. The general plan of a tax-supported system of 
schools must necessarily be somewhat arbitrary, but the men and 
women who carry out that plan must, within their fields, be free. 
Administrative officers must be able to plan in their own way so 
long as their plans work well, and teachers must be able to teach m 
their own way so long as there is good result. But so much is only 
commonplace. Opportunity must be open and spontaneity must 
be encouraged. Because New York has a centralized system of 
school administration, we are charged in some quarters with having 
a hard and fast system, an overorganized system, a mechanical 
system. I am anxious to discuss that and hope to be understood 
about it. Above all, I hope New York school people may have a 
complete understanding among themselves about it. That will help 
the people of other states to understand it. 

I should be discouraged if I did not believe that our centralized 
administration enlarges local opportunity and spontaneity as to all 
wholesome educational impulses. What is freedom in education? 
It surely is not the right to do wrong. There is no such right. 
Educational freedom is the right to promote only a good educational 
end, but in one's own way. Centralized educational administration, 
unless it is weak or debased, protects this right. Of course, if it is 
vicious there is little hope, but viciousness is less likely in a large 
than in a small organization, and in a state-wide than in a localized 
administration ; and, in any event, viciousness in education can 
not last. If there is a question between right and wrong in edu- 
cation, it is much more likely to be wisely determined when millions 
of people are concerned than when only a few hundreds or a few 
families are interested. A concentrated system prevents abuses 
without impeding progress. It is able to stop abuses and settle 
issues this side of eternity. It carries the experience and the 
strength of the whole state to every corner of the state, to uplift 
every resident and vitalize every school, without stopping any 
sincere and rational man from doing what he will to induce his 
neighbors to carry his thought into their schools, without stopping 
any neighborhood or city from doing whatever it thinks best for 



40 

the good of its own schools, and without keeping any teacher from 
teaching with all freedom. 

State educational administration ought to do for schools what 
the state law does for the order of every town and every hamlet; 
namely, afford educational security and enlarge educational oppor- 
tunity over every rod of the territory of the state. Essentially, 
that is what the State Education Department does. It never goes 
beyond that in any legal or authoritative way. Probably its officers 
and agents discuss pedagogy and psychology, as all teachers have 
to do; and they may exhort and evangelize a little for education; 
but they do not undertake to run politics, they are not looking for 
votes, they do not interfere with the churches, they do not extort 
gifts, they do not say who shall build the schoolhouses, or who 
shall be employed to do the teaching. The Department wants the 
support of rational people for good ends ; it does not have to court 
any other support. It is dependent upon the right-minded; over- 
reaching would and ought to destroy it. The Department comes 
in authoritatively when the law which the people have made directs 
it to do so. When a schoolhouse is positively unsanitary, and the 
people will not exercise their freedom to build another, the De- 
partment tells them they must. When a building is filthy and the 
people neglect their right to clean it, the Department — only once, 
when it ought to fifty times — reminds them of their freedom and 
tries to supply them with the resolution which is required to 
exercise it. When an officer is caught stealing, or a teacher has 
been too hilarious, the law and the Department point the way and 
provide the means for getting rid of him. 

The State certainly has a great deal to do with shaping the work 
in the schools. The State essays to do things upon its own motion ; 
but the success of what it does, beyond what the law commands, 
depends upon the worth of it. It sends syllabuses to, and it holds 
examinations in, the schools. I have never heard any one entitled 
to express an opinion say that the syllabuses are not better than any 
subdivision of the State seems able to make. No one is obliged to 
use them, but they are generally used. The pedagogical value of 
examinations will probably be asserted and disputed so long as 
instruction continues. There are uses and abuses in examinations. 
The severest critics of examinations in general are those who 
disbelieve in definite work in the schools and do not like to submit 
themselves or their work to any exact standards of measurement. 
The main critics of our examinations are those who know least 



4i 

about them. No one can fairly dispute the pedagogical value of 
examinations ; and knowing better than formerly the abuses which 
are very liable to be associated with examinations, the Education 
Department has been doing, and will continue to do, what it may 
to keep them out. 

Probably no one will dispute that since April I, 1904, the steady 
policy of the State has been to relax the rigors of the academic 
examinations and make them of the surest educational value. If 
they have not been brought into close touch with the teaching, 
no general system of examinations is likely to be. They are being 
made absolutely responsive to the progress of the school system 
which they stimulate. The Department has taken the following 
definite steps in the last six years : 

1 In 1904 it reduced the number of examinations for any one 
pupil, in any one year, from three to two. 

2 In 1906 it began to accept local ratings in all preacademic 
subjects. 

3 In 1906 it ceased to require examinations in the first and 
second year of the high school, and declared that passing the State 
examinations was not necessary for promotion in or graduation 
from secondary schools. In other words, the schools might make 
their own standards. The examinations were to test schools rather 
than pupils. 

4 In 1906 it arranged that pupils might have credit in twenty 
special subjects by passing an examination in a general subject 
logically subsequent thereto. 

5 In 1906 it discontinued a large number of half-year subjects 
and the examinations incident thereto. 

6 In 1906 it created the State Examinations Board composed of 
equal representation from the Department, the colleges, the second- 
ary schools, and the superintendencies, to relate the examinations 
still more closely to the best teaching and the real progress in the 
schools. 

7 In 1909 it began to accept the school ratings in twelve dif- 
ferent academic subjects. 

8 In the syllabus of 1910 it has introduced a number of indus- 
trial subjects for which credit is given without examination. 

This is surely enough to show the disposition to assure and 
enlarge the freedom of the local school. No child in a secondary 
school need be menaced in the slightest degree by the academic 
examinations. Principals are continually urged to see that they 



42 

are not. And apart from the secondary schools, I may say that 
I have never believed in written examinations, beyond what the 
teachers may arrange, in the elementary schools ; and I shall not be 
much troubled about the severity of the examinations for lawyers, 
and doctors, and dentists, and pharmacists, and optometrists, and 
accountants, and nurses, and all the rest, so long as the unoffending 
Regents are not disturbed by the clamor of the disappointed. 

The fact is that the educational advantages of examinations are 
fundamental and far-reaching, and the disadvantages are incidental 
and transitory. Our examinations system is peculiar and invalu- 
able to New York. Its main purpose is to test schools which enjoy 
the largess of the State, rather than to test pupils, but it incites 
pupils as well as teachers; it guards the gateways to the colleges 
and to all the professions, not excepting that of teaching; it con- 
tributes to the solidarity of the educational system, and it is doing 
more than anything else to fix standards in American secondary 
and professional education. There is nothing about it that is un- 
reasonable, arbitrary, or mechanical ; there is much about it that 
inspires, quickens, and guides. It keeps a great school system 
moving along in the middle of a broad highway, while it encour- 
ages teachers to gather all the flowers they may find along the sides 
of the road — or even to get over the fences and indulge in wild 
flowers, so long as they do not get altogether separated from the 
procession and go into the woods so far that they may never get 
back. 

There is reason for saying that New York presents the extreme 
of educational freedom and order — freedom from the decentral- 
ization, divergence of plan and policy, and the general disorder 
which are apparent enough in states without a strong bond of edu- 
cational union. If the state universities had not been developed 
in other states to do, in effect, what our State University and De- 
partment of Public Instruction have for generations been trying 
to do in this State, a very great field in American education outside 
of this State would have been, long before this time, in the unde- 
fined realm of chaos. Now, if to our system we can graft on those 
features of the state universities which enlarge the opportunities 
of poor and ambitious youth, and bring the practical aid of the 
scientific laboratories of our universities to the business of the 
State and its subdivisions, and also to the support of the manu- 
facturing and commercial industries of the people, we shall have 
a school system which will overtop them all. 



43 

There is no complaint in New York about state limitations upon 
educational freedom. Indeed, evidences are not altogether lacking 
of a disposition to lean against the State for educational support. 
It might be well if all cities and towns and districts had nothing 
more to learn and needed no further outside help, but that is 
hardly likely to be. And leaning on New York is not like kissing 
the hand of the Sultan of Turkey or of an Indian maharajah. 
There is no submission or subjugation about it. Indeed, the State 
of New York is bound to impose upon all the cities and districts, 
and upon all the officers and teachers of the schools, just as much 
freedom in the execution of the educational plans which all have 
adopted as they can, without license and disorder, be induced to use. 

If a system of schools is to have power, it must find it in edu- 
cational unity which has some respect for simple and sincere life. 
It must have theories that are rational and plans that are work- 
able. It must, of course, be tolerant of all opinion that intends to 
be true, and of all schools that have a modicum of real educational 
spirit. But it must have an organization to be proud of, one under 
whose banners intelligent people may be glad to be seen. It must 
accomplish what it undertakes. It will have power, even though 
it undertakes but little, if it finishes what it assumes to do. It will 
be a weak affair, no matter how ambitious its pretences, if it 
transmits no real power and if its product is of no real strength. 

It must have no more to do than it can do without floundering. 
The most serious drawback upon our school system is the con- 
fusion of work ; the multiplicity of grades and branches and books 
and appliances ; the extreme courtesy to mere theorists ; the indiffer- 
ence to the value of the time of children; and the jauntiness with 
which we seem willing to muddle the intellectual processes of boys 
and girls. The remedy is in an educational unity that resents it 
and that is strong enough to reform the existing situation. The 
conservation of national resources is a favorite and fashionable 
theme for statesmen and publicists. It is of no account whatever 
in comparison with the conservation of the lives of children through 
a training that refuses to waste time and that transmits the power 
to do definite things. Nothing can go before that, and what is 
very needful will follow it. 

It is only putting it in another way or suggesting another phase 
of the matter, to say that a system of schools will have to be able 
to resist if it is going to have power. It will have to keep out all 
the intruders that are obnoxious to its work, no matter how 



44 

respectable they are. Partisanship is ordinarily praiseworthy, but 
it may easily become a menace to education. Politics is the arch 
enemy of schools, and a system of schools is strong only as it is 
able to be wholly above it. All manner of people and organizations 
want to use the schools for their own purposes. The list would be 
interesting if not so long. In a recent week the organized officers 
of the Army, and then of the Navy, of the United States applied 
to me for leave to exploit the schools in the interest of more 
recruits and more battleships, and the professional peacemakers 
asked to use the schools to make sure of universal peace at almost 
any price. There is only one safe course. That lies in not allowing 
any one to use the schools to promote any theory or interest of 
his own or of a relatively small part of the people. A system of 
schools that is able to keep out obtruders possesses one of the most 
vital elements of educational power. 

The training of new teachers and the universal supervision of 
the teaching by experts are twin elements of powers, of the first 
practical importance, in a system of schools. It is generally idle to 
criticize without proposing a remedy, but I shall not refrain from 
saying that I can not feel satisfied with our system of training 
teachers. All the circumstances of the teaching service have 
changed marvelously in a generation, but our plans for training 
teachers have not changed much. We have made it easy for college 
graduates to teach, but we get relatively few of them. The men 
and many of the stronger women are in danger of disappearing 
from the normal schools. The normal schools have not been sup- 
ported or managed in a way to enable them to respond to the 
demands of the new conditions, and the more aggressive spirits 
prefer to go to the multiplying colleges. Many high schools have 
grown up to do as broad work as the State normal schools. The 
training classes serve to brace up some high schools that are 
none too strong, and do a little something towards training teachers 
for the country schools. Teachers earn certificates in the academic 
examinations. We are actually getting the largest number of our 
best young teachers from the colleges and high schools after we 
have catechised them a little about pedagogy. Is there not room 
for the suspicion that we have been emphasizing pedagogical theory 
and methods over a real knowledge of the thing being taught and 
over real intellectual companionship between teacher and student, 
a little more than the facts will stand? And if that is so it might 
have something to' do with a trouble that is apparent in the schools. 



45 

The subject is so large and involves changes in instrumentalities 
of so much moment, that none of us can deal with it alone, but 
I shall welcome a thorough consideration of the question as to 
how we can more completely and surely reinforce the teaching in 
our system of schools. 

To have efficiency and power, a system of schools must have 
capable and universal supervision by scholarly and successful 
teachers, who, on the one hand, have the gift of just criticism, of 
systematic organization, and of inspirational leadership, and, on 
the other hand, are anxious to serve all the people, are above 
bigotry, know better than to attempt politics to protect their places, 
and are able to bear an independent and aggressive part in the 
intellectual affairs of the community they serve. We brought a 
long contest to a successful issue when we amended the Education 
Law last winter by providing for this in all of the rural parts of 
the State. It is a great advance step. There are suggestions of 
repeal, but there will be none. The old system is doomed. There 
will not only be no pardon ; there will be no reprieve. " The law 
will be allowed to take its course." The teaching in the country 
schools of New York is to come under the direction of real super- 
intendents, with real educational powers, who will be required to 
give their entire time to their work. 

But there are cities in the State that need better schools which 
are likely to come only through the capacity and the courage of 
superintendents. There are quite a number of cities where the 
political organizations in power, aided by provisions in the charters, 
use the schools for political or personal ends and take away the in- 
dependence and effectiveness of the superintendents of schools. And 
it must be said that there are superintendents who, without realiz- 
ing it, make the people believe that they have very excellent schools 
when tfiey have very indifferent ones. Let me remind you that I 
do not look at the matter from the viewpoint of theory alone. I 
have had sufficient actual experience in the difficulties and the 
dangers of a city superintendent of schools. But I know well the 
fundamental educational purpose of the free democracy in which 
we live. When a sincere superintendent attends strictly to the 
business of the schools, dislikes a fight but will not run away from 
one, goes over the heads of the mere politicians if need be, and 
appeals directly to the people for support, he will either get it in 
overwhelming measure, or the clock has struck the hour for him to 
stamp the thick dust of the town from his feet. 



4 6 

I shall have to be content with naming one more of the inherent 
elements of power necessary to a potential school system. I select 
the power to expand and progress itself. We find that power in 
large measure in the legal organization of our New York system. 
The Education Law invests a centralized school organization with 
ample power to strengthen and uplift itself. The states have sov- 
erign power in educational matters, and New York has delegated 
that power to the Board of Regents and other officers all along the 
line, until between them they can do any educational thing what- 
ever that needs to be done, unless perhaps to prevent the encroach- 
ment of partisanship and compel the raising of the necessary money. 
There is an occasional disadvantage in free government ; generally it 
is more imaginary than real ; and there are many more advan- 
tages than disadvantages. Of course, everything depends upon the 
educational organization moving wisely. If we exercise power 
foolishly it will be withdrawn. But so long as we show capacity 
for management and construction, we have ample power within 
our own organization to do anything, from chartering a university 
to cleaning up a country schoolhouse. The money that is needed 
comes along with all the rest. The people tax themselves very 
freely for schools. We need not feel sorry for the State itself. 
With the hundred millions that are being dumped in a rather hap- 
hazard way into the barge canal ; with the other hundred millions 
that are building highways; and with still other millions that are 
going into charities and prisons and every need of a vast and 
wealthy State, there is small danger that the schools will not be 
given what they can use in a sane and honest way for the intellectual 
progress which concerns every citizen and every interest of the 
State. Our democracy is working in our education. It may have 
to move slowly for lack of wisdom, but its rational advance will 
not be halted for lack of money. 

Then let us gather our reflections and say the concluding word. 
A system of schools that applies to and uplifts the life of the peo- 
ple so that they believe in it; that calls out and gathers to itself 
the support and the strength which the plain people have to give; 
that builds better and better schoolhouses and steadily improves 
its housekeeping; that makes for rational living and develops real 
scholarship all along the line ; that carries its advantages to the very 
doors of all the people; that tolerates freedom, and insists upon it 
for itself, and yet attends to its own business; that has clear pur- 
poses and makes plans that will work ; that is above pedantry and 



47 

pretence ; that resist interference and resents the superficial ; that 
seeks the point of equipoise between general leadership and local 
initiative, between professional and industrial pursuits, and between 
profligacy and parsimony ; that has power to settle its own contro- 
versies and contains the seeds of its own strength and progress; 
that is the system of schools which has the inherent elements of 
educational power. 

I am not unaware that I have ventured to make and to imply 
some criticisms of our educational system. I strive for the organ- 
ization that employs and honors me. My criticisms are not intended 
to be disagreeably personal. It is difficult to work a distinct reform 
in a single school. It is more difficult to work general reforms in 
a great system of schools. It is doubly difficult when those reforms 
relate to new policies and to advance steps which are necessarily 
matters of opinion. But an educational system waves aside its 
largest element of power and usefulness, unless it both anticipates 
and creates new situations, unless it continually unfolds new poli- 
cies, unless it is unceasingly taking advance steps, unless it main- 
tains living relations with the progress of the world. If, with 
enough confidence, but without too much conceit, we can — as I 
am sure we can — unitedly lay hold of the elements of power which 
the New York educational system possesses, to make a better sys- 
tem, and keep marching ahead, we will afford every one his equal 
chance, we will elevate the intellectual and moral planes of a mighty 
and a very active people, and we will bring added prosperity and 
new honor to the foremost of American commonwealths. 



RELIGION, MORALS, ETHICS, AND 
THE SCHOOLS 



RELIGION, MORALS, ETHICS AND THE SCHOOLS 

It is quite evident that in recent years there has been unusual 
interest in moral questions and a very considerable quickening and 
broadening of religious feeling. This is not peculiar to the United 
States ; it is apparent in all of the more progressive nations of the 
world. People who think and feel most deeply about such matters 
see something significant in the appearance of this fact among 
widely different and far distant nations at the same time. What- 
ever the cause or significance of it, the immediate results are appar- 
ent enough. One of those results is the most thorough and wide- 
spread discussion, in the last decade, of the relations of organized 
government to the instruction of the people, and particularly of 
the young, that the world has ever had. The moving cause of this 
discussion has naturally centered it upon the teaching of morals, 
with special reference to the responsibility and the logical attitudes 
of the nations concerning the formation of individual character and 
the enlargement of national respectability and power. 

As the people of the State of New York are specially concerned 
about this important matter, a general and necessarily condensed 
statement of what has been going on in this connection in other 
nations than our own, a discussion of the relations of our own state 
and national governments to the subject, with some expression of 
my personal views as to what New York may and ought to do 
beyond what she has done in this connection, seems appropriate 
at this time. 

In the world discussion of the matter, " religion," " morals " 
and " ethics " are being used with appropriate discrimination. Per- 
haps " religion " may be said to mean one's belief deduced from 
his feelings, even more than from his thinking, concerning his 
relations to a Being superior to himself. " Morals " may be taken 
to express both an intellectual distinction and an impulsive feeling 
between right and wrong, and to indicate a course of conduct which, 
judged by the standards of physical and social life that have re- 
sulted from the experiences and the good impulses of the world, 
is as near correct as good intentions may be expected to reach. 



Special theme, written for the Seventh Annual Report of the State Educa- 
tion Department (191 1). 



52 

" Ethics " concerns the more rational or philosophical side of 
morals. It is more a matter of the mind than of the spirit and 
relates to cause somewhat, but to expression much more; to motive 
somewhat, but to form a great deal more. It reasons out a correct 
procedure on the basis of policy quite as much as of right. It 
takes all of the conditions and laws into account and reasons out 
the course which it is expedient to take. 

Of course, critics and philosophers and wonderers and wanderers, 
according to their different viewpoints, may find flaws in these defi- 
nitions, but they will perhaps suffice for laymen, for ordinary 
people of affairs, and for treating the relations of the feelings, the 
beliefs, and the virtues, to the public schools from the nontheo- 
logical standpoint of the average officer charged with school 
administration. 

All the nations recognize, and have always recognized, the need 
of education; and all have long borne witness, through their acts, 
to the claims of the moral as well as the physical and mental factors 
in the evolution of the human being making any approach to per- 
fection. But in all the years of human history taken together there 
has been no such earnest and widespread discussion of the influ- 
ences of secular government and the training of the mind upon 
moral character and the social good, as in the last ten years. The 
more thoughtful people in all the nations, and in some cases a 
great many of the less thoughtful people, have been discussing the 
subject with earnestness, sometimes amounting to acrimony. Some 
nations have separated into opposing camps over the matter; gov- 
ernment administrations, and parliaments, and political parties, have 
been agitated by the possibility of overthrow because of it. It has 
led to conferences, commissions, and leagues; has been attended by 
inquiries and investigations that have often been searching and 
far-reaching; and has resulted in a literature that is luminous 
enough but so voluminous that one mind can hardly hope to get all 
of the luminosity out of it. 

It is extremely interesting to see how the subject is approached 
from diametrically opposite sides by the people of different lands. 
In all lands and in all the generations of modern history religion has 
quickened education, and churches have been the first promoters 
of schools. But it must be said that faiths of different qualities 
and textures have fixed the plane of education low as well as high, 
and churches have often used schools to promote ends that were 
quite as self-seeking as religious. As freedom has expanded, re- 



53 

Hgion has become less rigid in its intellectual processes and more 
generous in its judgments, and education has become more tolerant 
of opinion and correspondingly more independent and aggressive 
in its operations. Where nearly or quite all of the people have been 
of one religious faith and sect; where religion has been a part of 
the curriculum of the schools and taught by the ministers of a 
dominant church, the state and church have been one and the 
business of training the intelligence and the emotions of the young 
have gone along together, rather peaceably but rather slowly, until 
advancing intelligence and enlarged opportunity have raised up a 
protesting party to demand that there shall be no ecclesiastical 
limitations upon learning. 

Such protesting parties and such demands have arisen in every 
part of the world where learning has had anything like a free 
chance. Faith and light have opened opportunities for protesting 
parties in all lands. In every country it is being urged by a more 
or less organized party that a dominant church is inimical not only 
to learning but to the growth of the soundest morality, and to the 
purity and strength and universality of religious feeling as well. 
And in every one of them it is being insisted that the mere self- 
seeking of a church shall not be allowed in the schools of the 
people; that the children shall be taught in an atmosphere that is 
morally and even religiously clear and stimulating, but free from 
sectarian bias ; and that mere theological opinion must rely, for its 
propagation, upon the homes, the churches, and other social and 
voluntary organizations quite independent of the political interests 
and the military power of government. And when we see how 
vehement this demand is, what deep bitterness attends it, and what 
far-reaching moral and political results flow from it, we are bound 
to think that the fathers of the American Republic were wise be- 
yond their day and generation when they determined upon making 
the complete separation of state and church a basic principle in our 
political system. We have had and probably are yet to have our 
difficulties, but there is satisfaction in knowing that the difficulties 
have been greater under the political systems which we left behind, 
and that if we had not done it at the beginning we would ultimately 
have been obliged to do precisely what we have been doing for 
more than a hundred years. Nor is there trouble in believing that 
the uparalleled unfolding of a nation of very first rank in the 
western world has grown out of the fact that, at the very begin- 
ning, we conscientiously made this fundamental principle a corner 
stone of our constitutional and political structure. 



54 

England, the mother country, has in recent years been greatly 
stirred over this subject. The partisan advantage which the Church 
of England has had from her very decisive, if not controlling, influ- 
ence over the plans and policies of English schools, as well as the 
impeding effects of that influence upon the freedom of all grades 
of education for all people, and the many plans for lessening 
or annulling this, have been seriously discussed pro and con in all 
of the innumerable ways and places which afford opportunity for 
the expression of the always virile English opinion. The press has 
been stirred and the church shaken by it. The Parliament house 
itself is very familiar with the discussion of the subject, and, in 
consequence of it, more than once in the last decade the adminis- 
tration in power has been threatened with dissolution. 

Although the English have approached the subject from the 
other side than our own, the questions involved are much the same 
as those in the United States, which will be considered later. It is 
impossible to treat the occurrences in detail here, but surely enough 
has occurred to exemplify the definite purpose of the steadily en- 
larging political power of the common people to have larger and 
more evenly distributed educational opportunity. The overwhelm- 
ing trend is in the direction of schools of every grade where all the 
people may be trained in secular studies, in the moral virtues, and 
even in religious feeling, as far as that may be without incurring 
the disadvantages which all experience has shown popular educa- 
tion suffers when dominated by religious sectarianism. Happily, 
notwithstanding the fierce discussion, the movement goes forward 
in England in a slow and sure and steady fashion, in an evolution- 
ary rather than a revolutionary way. If it is slow, it is contending 
with conditions that have been a thousand years in the growing, 
and it is among a people who are accustomed to move as delib- 
erately as they do unmistakably. Its outcome is as certain as the 
proverbial progress of the Anglo-Saxon race. 

There have been religious and educational doings in France, as 
well as in England. Doubtless France teaches morals, as dis- 
tinguished from religion, in a formal way, in her schools of all 
grades, more systematically than any other nation in the world. 
All of her public school education shows the extreme of organiza- 
tion and system. From the bottom to the top, it is all laid out and 
directed from a central office of the government and it is both 
efficient and mechanical. The teaching of morals, like all the rest 
of the teaching, is carried on by means of a uniform and most 



55 

elaborate course of study which brings all of the moral virtues 
to the regular and frequent attention of every child so long as he 
is in the schools. This course also contains frequent references to 
God, but only of such respect for Him as should forbid taking His 
name in vain, and other virtues of a similar kind. Aside from this, 
the law provides that one day in the week, besides Sunday, shall be 
set apart to enable parents who so desire to arrange for religious 
instruction for their children outside of the school buildings. The 
Roman Catholic Church maintains many schools of its own through 
which the tenets of that church are distinctly taught. The same 
is true of the Jews. Through it all it is easy to discern a great 
deal of French history. The predominant feeling of the nation 
has conscientiously rebelled against the overwhelming ecclesiasti- 
cism of the Empire, and under the Republic has sought refuge in 
formal training in morals and ethics. It could not be expected to 
solve so difficult a problem at one step. It is quite apparent that 
it has not done so. But France challenges the sympathy of, and 
gives a lesson to, moralists in all parts of the world. 

By this it is not intended to imply that the formal moral instruc- 
tion has resulted in failure. On the contrary it seems to be gaining, 
slowly but appreciably, in respect and in power. But the trouble is 
that France seems in danger of losing its moral unity : in moral mat- 
ters the nation seems pretty nearly cleft in twain. The people are 
taught to oppose, even to hate, the church in which they were bap- 
tized, or married, or from which they will be buried. And formal 
moral instruction by or to people who do not both respect and regard 
a church seems hardly less weak an instrument for building the moral 
character of a nation than does religious preaching through a priest- 
hood that may be left very largely to its own self-seeking. Political 
and religious freedom have been enlarging their opportunities under 
the French Republic. In doing so they have been seeking education 
that is not limited by the dogmatic teaching of a church. And thus 
they have been pulling down a church without reforming it or putting 
another in its place. It is to be feared that this has been destroying 
faith altogether. Instruction about the moral virtues without faith 
and feeling may result in the superficial politeness which is perhaps 
a little better than savagery, more than in the sound character which 
is infinitely better than either. 

In Germany the Protestant religion, according to the dogmatic 
theology of Martin Luther and his associates and followers, has been 
generally taught in the schools. The Bible has been expounded by the 



56 

ministers of the Lutheran Church who have come into the schools 
at four or five fixed hours of the week for the purpose. In later 
years, but in relatively few sections, the Roman Catholics and other 
denominations of Christians, and also the Jews, have exercised the 
same privilege. With some slight variations as between the different 
kingdoms or states of the Empire, there has been general uniformity 
of plan. In recent years there has been considerable protest. Many 
societies of a freer faith than either of the classes mentioned have 
grown up. Here too, as in Britain and France, democracy has been 
making headway, and freer religious and political opinions have been 
associated with it. So the protests against dogmatic religious instruc- 
tion in the schools have become both very general and very strong. 

In 1905 the teachers of the city of Bremen, by addressing a memo- 
rial to the municipal senate, initiated a movement looking to the 
substitution of moral for religious instruction in the schools. While 
the senate did not accede to the suggestion of the teachers, this 
proposition has so extended to other and even more significant 
centers of the German Empire that the movement claims attention. 
The memorial of these teachers to their superior authority asserts 
that a free state can not properly permit the schools to be used to 
impose any particular confession of faith on the people ; refers to 
the advantages which have come from the separation of church and 
state in other countries ; and urges that the religious instruction 
given by clergymen in the schools of Germany is out of harmony 
with the progressive science and philosophy of our times. They 
propose and outline a course in morals and ethics to be taught 
pedagogically, at stated periods, just as other subjects are taught, in 
place of the religious teaching by clergymen of the near-by churches. 
This Bremen movement, or something very like it, took a strong 
hold in other great cities. In the great city of Hamburg the discus- 
sion became so warm that the movement came to be called the 
Hamburg movement. 

To show what these teachers ask for and how those who are dis- 
cussing the subject distinguish between religious and moral instruc- 
tion, it may be well to quote the following from their formal petition : 

I The giving of religious instruction, as far as it is 
desired by the parents of the children, should be left to 
the different religious bodies. 

II Moral instruction should be given as heretofore, but 
not in conjunction with religious instruction, as has been 
hitherto done. 



57 

III The Moral instruction is conceived in the broad 
spirit of a knowledge of human nature and the Universe, 
which is already done, to some extent, in the treatment 
given to the so-called sample pieces in the reading lessons. 

IV The Moral instruction in the lower and middle 
grades is chiefly imparted through the medium of selec- 
tions from the whole literature of the world, from which 
literature is to be abstracted material which offers in- 
tellectual, moral, and literary food of a high quality suit- 
able to the different grades. 

While it seems quite true that the drift among German teachers 
in general is in the direction of what is now known as the Hamburg 
movement, and that the movement has a very considerable following 
from many other people who may be more influential than the teach- 
ers in creating public opinion, it also seems true that the power of the 
state which has so long sustained religious instruction in the schools 
will, for a time at least and perhaps permanently, prevent much 
departure from the established plan. This seems more surely so 
when we remember the serious concern of the Germans about their 
schools, and the unyielding grasp which they have upon every detail. 

It is interesting to note that the criticisms upon the religious 
instruction in the German schools are by no means confined to teach- 
ers. While the teachers say it is unpedagogical, too emotional, nar- 
row, and hidebound, the leaders of religious thought, who are most 
concerned about it, say that it is too pedantic, formal, and inefficient. 
Sometimes they even go so far as to say that without encouraging 
morality it really destroys real reverence and religious spirit. Of 
course the whole matter is associated with the fact that an over- 
whelming number of the teachers are men, with the very exact if 
not severe discipline in the schools, and with the influence of militar- 
ism upon the life of the people. When we remember that Germany 
is educationally both a very tenacious and powerful and a very free 
and democratic country, we can not fail to watch with absorbing in- 
terest any breaking away from the religious traditions and usages 
which have come down from the Protestant Reformation of three 
hundred years ago. And that there is some such breaking away in 
nearly all parts of the German Empire is apparent enough. How 
far it will go and to just what it will lead is uncertain, but we may 
feel assured that it will neither go backward nor become unscientific. 

Whatever the outcome, the movement is strong enough and gen- 
eral enough to command the attention of educationists in other coun- 
tries. It is a protest against rule-of-thumb instruction in religious 
dogma, and unpedagogical teaching by churchmen ; and it comes 



58 

from Germany with special significance. It is pronounced and 
rational enough to be regarded wherever people are trying to train 
both moral character and intellectual freedom into the men and 
women of a nation. 

Norzvay and Siveden (may I be forgiven for coupling them) have 
peoples who are quite uniformly in moderate circumstances, but as 
uniformly industrious, honest, and intelligent. They live a simple, 
well-ordered, and attractive life. Every child goes to school as a 
matter of course, and in the few towns of any size there are excellent 
schools of every grade and for every purpose. There is really 
no illiteracy. Probably more than ninety per cent of the people are 
Lutherans. This fact and the simple and delightful life of a homo- 
geneous people combine to sustain not only moral but denominational 
and dogmatic teaching in both the primary and secondary schools. 

In Italy the educational system has grown rapidly in form and 
substance, and in freedom as well, since the adoption of the Educa- 
tion Code of 1905. This code provides for the very exact teaching 
of morals, ethics, and civics in all the grades of the schools. It 
presents with great care and minuteness, and always with most com- 
mendable outlook and spirit, the long category of moral virtues which 
have to be trained into children if, when they are grown, they are to 
be much governed by them. In the middle and higher schools, which 
are purely state institutions, there is no definite religious or dogmatic 
teaching. The state law makes religious instruction optional in the 
" communes," or districts, which manage and support their own 
primary schools. As a result, in a commune where the people are 
all of one church, the priests or ministers of that church instruct the 
schools in religious matters. In many communes all or nearly all 
the people are Roman Catholics, and thus that denomination is as 
prevailing and influential in the schools as the Lutherans are in 
Norway. But, if any other church were universal in a community it 
would apparently, have the same privilege. In communities that are 
religiously mixed, strictly religious or theological instruction is abol- 
ished altogether, or children must, at the request of the parents, be 
excused from it. And this shows not only that Italy has been 
making striking religious and intellectual progress, but it also indicates 
that the course of educational events is likely to be much the same 
in all countries without regard to early religious conditions, no matter 
whether one sect or another has been dominant. 

Among all the peoples of whom we have spoken, Christianity pre- 
vails overwhelmingly. That is not true of Japan, where the teachers 



59 

of a constitutional monarchy, with reasonable emphasis on constitu- 
tional and perhaps especial stress on monarchy, are required to 
exemplify and teach the moral virtues systematically in all the grades 
of a comprehensive school system. It is claimed that the schools are 
religiously free, and doubtless they are as free as they can be where 
a single religious belief is so general. The plan of the Japanese 
school system was laid by American teachers who, with government 
cooperation, adapted the American model to Japanese conditions. It 
has reduced illiteracy to the vanishing point, which is more than we 
have done, and it has effected the general recognition of the external 
moral and civic virtues. 

The imperial ordinance defines the object of elementary education 
well enough to justify copying : 

Elementary schools are designed to give children the 
rudiments of moral education and civic education, to- 
gether with such general knowledge and skill as are neces- 
sary for life, while due attention is paid to their bodily de- 
velopment. 

It is within the fact to say that no nation goes farther in requiring 
all children to attend common schools, or trains all children in " moral 
education and civic education " more persistently and systematically 
than does Japan. The syllabus of the subject and the directions to 
the teachers are more comprehensive, minute, and exact, and they 
are also more informing and attractive, than anything that has been 
laid down by the supreme authority of any other nation. Of course 
this teaching is associated with a religion in the feelings of the people 
if not in the plan of the schools. It is a religion which seems strange 
to us. What the ultimate result upon the character of the nation will 
be is perhaps more a matter of religion than of education. It is not 
for us to dogmatize about that. It must be admitted that there is 
much to signify that an exact, comprehensive, and compulsory system 
of education which includes definite instruction in the moral virtues 
and avoids dogmatic religion, has, in forty years, gone far to bring 
a nation out of barbarism and start it swiftly along the road of 
intellectual and moral progress. About the ultimate result it is not 
for us to form harsh or premature judgments. But the subject will 
not soon cease to be of interest to both educationists and religionists. 

It is worth mentioning that only the other day the Kingdom of 
Portugal was overthrown by a popular revolt which is certainly sub- 
stantial and seems likely to have permanent results, and which was 
unquestionably provoked by evils that are found to be ordinarily 



6o 

attendant upon an alliance between church and state. It is not neces- 
sary to inquire whether it is because of the fault of the state or of the 
church, or indeed whether it is because of the fault of anybody. It 
makes no difference whether it is in consequence of political corrup- 
tion or of ecclesiastical limitations upon education. It is enough to 
know that this latest revolution is only cumulative evidence that such 
an alliance limits and corrupts both of the parties concerned, and that, 
as intelligence advances and political opportunity enlarges, revolu- 
tion is the natural result. The differing aspects and measures of 
violence attendant upon such revolutions are exceedingly significant 
of the political, reglious, and educational conditions which previously 
prevailed, and of the differing temperaments of the peoples who are 
bent upon changing them. In all countries where the diffusion of 
knowledge is making any headway among the people, the. church 
which depends upon political or military power is being worsted, and 
the state which uses ecclesiasticism falsely in the name of religion to 
augment its strength and prolong its life is bound to confront serious 
troubles and, unless it is wise enough to learn the great lessons which 
are taught by the political and religious progress of the world, it is 
doomed to humiliation and overthrow. 

We have now gone as far as we ought in showing world interest 
in our subject and something of the trend of opinion among other 
nations of widely different religious and educational circumstances. 
Wherever we might go we should find much the same thing. Every- 
where morality is recognized as an imperative factor in education. 
No objection is heard in any quarter against the inculcation of the 
moral virtues in the schools. Wherever substantially all the people 
are of one religious sect, objection is of course not made to the 
propagation of the peculiar tenets of that sect through the schools. 
Where new and considerable factors have entered into the population 
and brought different religious beliefs with them, strong objection 
has been offered to the promotion of sectarian religion in the schools. 
This has been equally true where a people has enjoyed marked in- 
tellectual development which has brought out and differentiated their 
theological opinions. 

Various devices, such as dismissing the children to the churches, 
or separating them into groups at fixed hours for religious instruc- 
tion by clergymen of the churches of which their parents are ad- 
herents, have been resorted to to get around the objection, but these 
have not resulted satisfactorily where the ground of the objection 
continued. It is difficult to see how one can study the history of the 



6i 

subject without becoming more and more convinced of the vital need 
of common schools and without coming to the conclusion that 
among a people with a mixture of sectarian opinions, the only basis 
of common schools is to commit matters of doctrine to the churches 
and see that the recognized moral virtues are exemplified and taught 
in the schools. Conceding so much, there may be no reason for 
excluding religion from the schools beyond the exactions of opposing 
groups of religionists. The degree of exclusion may depend upon 
the wisdom, the devotion, the toleration, and the fraternal concord 
of religionists themselves. But the representative assemblies and 
the executive authorities of governments which have to deal with 
the subject must have peace upon some basis, and they will be likely 
to keep far enough away from sectarian differences to be upon ground 
where peace is possible. 

The United States occupies a situation upon this subject different 
from any other nation. Of all the nations we now have a mixed 
population. Christianity is the overwhelming religion of this coun- 
try, but the Christian sects are innumerable, with a clergy sharply 
separated upon matters of abstruse theology, and with many ad- 
herents who have much pride in the church organizations and deep 
interest in the church activities. When it comes to the policies of 
common schools, these Christian denominations are in some instances 
as obdurate and opposed as Christians and Mohammedans or Budd- 
hists could be. From the beginnings of our history as an independent 
nation we have stood resolutely against any alliances of church and 
state. We were the first to take the definite attitude. We were 
the first to embed it in written constitutions. If anything, 
we have bent over backward when any issue was raised about 
it because we were bound to be upon the safe side of the question. 
As a result we have been the only nation to hear it said at one and 
the same time by its own people, that its common schools had both 
too much and too little religion in them. 

More than that is being said. It is being said that we are passing 
through a period of unprecedented disregard of law and morals, and 
that the absence of religious and moral teaching from the schools is 
the reason for it. That we are as near Sodom as the Egyptians were, 
or as the peoples between them and us have been, as some assume, is 
absurd. All generations have had to contend with immorality. In 
doing so all generations have indulged, as we do, in sweeping gener- 
alities. The literature of all peoples and times is full of them. Even 
the writings of the Puritan forefathers of America are filled with 



62 

them. As a speaker in a recent educational convention was saying 
things in this direction, President Lowell of Harvard leaned over 
and remarked to me, " I found, last week, that my great-grandfather 
said the same thing in a letter he wrote more than a hundred years 
ago." 

There is more to stir greed and quicken the universal human 
desire for self -advancement in America in this generation than in any 
other land or in any other generation. There are many more people, 
too, who are within the possibilities of unworthy success and there- 
fore within the temptation that is pretty nearly overwhelming. As 
there are more things to entice, and more people to be tempted, so 
there are more laws to break. So, too, in my view, there are more 
people who observe the law and the commandments in the face of 
manifold temptation than ever before in human history. There are 
more who have an active part in making laws, in establishing order, 
in advancing and defending the moral outposts against enlarging 
opportunities of evil, than in any other human generation. As there 
are more prizes and more contests and more rivals, and as the hopes 
and longings are deeper, and as the possibilities of fraud are multi- 
plied, the publicity is increased. More light has been turned on both 
sides of the proposition. This is more emphatically true of this coun- 
try than of any other country. An integrity worth commendation is 
one that resists the allurements of evil rather than one that has little 
opportunity to do a wrong when others will hear about it, or that is 
too insipid to see or to engage in the rivalries and contentions of life. 
Recalling all this, and stopping to think of all the unparalleled moral 
activities of our generation and our country, does it not seem as 
though integrity has more than kept abreast of opportunity and in- 
telligence in the mass of people of whom we know? And is not the 
integrity of a finer and stronger texture? 

But even if we were to assume that this generation has more 
shortcomings than other generations, what reasons are there for 
laying them at the doors of the schools? Are the modern schools 
less moral than the earlier ones? On the contrary, they are more 
so. The buildings are more attractive, more substantial, more 
sanitary and hygienic. They are much cleaner and there is far less 
vulgarity and obscenity in and about them. They are supplied with 
conveniences of which our fathers never heard. The teachers are 
generally far better educated and much better trained for their 
special work than the teachers of earlier days. There is no more 
moral and religious class of people than the teachers in American 



63 

schools. For any immoral conduct they lose their places. They 
are not only more earnest but more conscientious than any other 
class of workers of whom I know. The schools are much better 
organized, the work much more systematized, and the pupils very 
much better classified, than they used to be. The higher learning 
percolates into the lower schools as never before; the books are 
the best any schools ever had. They excel in subject matter, in 
the progressive and pedagogical presentation of the subject, in 
literary and artistic embellishment, and in all that can interest both 
children and adults. The discipline is not brutal and senseless as 
was too often the case a generation ago. The entire scheme and 
practice of the schools is arranged not only to quicken the intelli- 
gence of th'e child but also to draw out the finer and nobler quali- 
ties of human nature. Everything about the schools is sharply and 
affirmatively moral. As a necessary consequence the religious tend- 
encies are strong, quite as strong as and doubtless stronger than 
they ever were. The Bible is read about as much as the opposing 
attitudes of Christians will permit. The songs develop spirituality 
and patriotism alike. The environment, the teachers, the books, 
the work, the discipline, the sports, the suggestions and admoni- 
tions, all the influences, direct and indirect, make not only for 
correct living but also for the evolution of religious sentiment and 
feeling almost to the limits of possibilities, in the common schools 
of a people who require so many different kinds of churches to 
accommodate the unfathomable philosophies of spirituality which 
they have either inherited or invented. 

But while I believe that the world, and that part which is in 
America quite as much as any other part, grows better and stronger 
under the spell of modern education and through the fact that the 
good purposes of the human family outweigh the evil ones any- 
way, and that we know enough to enable our purposes to have 
their way; and while I must resent the suggestion that there is 
something about the schools that is causing an undue amount of 
deviltry in our American life just now, I should be a very un- 
worthy officer of the schools if I did not offer hospitality to every 
proposition which, without doing them harm, contains some possi- 
bility of making them more positive and potential for good. Then 
let us ask in particular what is proposed and what suggestions may 
be carried out without conflicting with the fundamental principle 
that in our government there must be no interdependence between 
church and state, and no control or selfish influence whatever by 
the one over the other. 



64 

It is urged that religious exercises should be more general in 
the schools. Such exercises comprise the reading of the Bible, 
the singing of hymns, a prayer, or the repetition of the Lord's 
Prayer. The propriety of this in tax-supported schools has long 
been questioned by some and the matter has been much discussed, 
but nevertheless the laws or principles bearing upon it are not as 
commonly understood as may well be desired. 

Religious exercises, dissociated from sectarianism, are and have 
always been very common in our schools. There is nothing in any 
American constitution to prohibit them. The first amendment to 
the Federal Constitution provides merely that Congress shall not 
make any law " respecting an establishment of religion or prohibit- 
ing the free exercise thereof." This is the only mention of any- 
thing related to the subject in the instrument, except the provision 
that " no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to 
any office or public trust under the United States." In a day when 
it was found both necessary and well to leave some matters to the 
states, this was among the matters that were so left. The state 
constitutions, in nearly or quite every case, have dealt with the 
subject. It would be interesting to assemble here all of these pro- 
visions of the state constitutions and the decisions of the state 
courts construing them. Of course that is not possible : the student 
of the subject can easily find them. The provisions in and the 
decisions under the New York Constitution are the only ones that 
are binding upon New York. A general statement as to the other 
states and a particular statement as to New York will have to 
suffice and doubtless will be enough. 

A government without an official religion was almost unknown 
when independence thrust upon the thirteen original states the 
responsibility of making constitutions. Indeed, written constitu- 
tions were then almost unknown. Magna Charta guaranteed the 
freedom not of all churches but of one church — the English 
State Church. That gave artificial aid to a great church but 
granted so little religious freedom that our Pilgrim forefathers had 
to leave the realm to worship God as they saw fit. To their credit 
be it said that they observed and extended this liberty when others 
came into their righteous and pathetic life at Plymouth. The great 
Puritan migration to America which succeeded the coming of the 
Pilgrims was actuated by political quite as much as religious mo- 
tive and worked but slowly an appreciable enlargement of religious 
freedom in this country. And as the Pilgrim colony was unhap- 
pily small and weak, freedom of religious thinking and of wor- 



ship had to wait in the eastern and in some of the southern 
colonies for generations and until the coming of a mixed population 
should teach the noble and unbending spirit of Puritanism what it 
owed to others as well as what it had the right to claim for itself. 
The other freedoms granted by Magna Charta were very great for 
the time. The "Petition of Right" (1628) passed over freedom 
of worship, but the Cromwellian revolution, which overturned the 
throne and struck off the head of the king, sought, among other 
liberties, the enlargement of religious liberty, and made head- 
way. With the harsh passions of a mob which meant well, it 
humiliated a church which had become aristocratic and autocratic. 
The "Agreement of the People" (1649) first lighted the candle 
which has become an electric light in American constitutions. An- 
other revolution, the expulsion of another king, and the " Bill of 
Rights" (1689) added a second or perhaps a third candle to the 
rather flickering illumination. Of this Macaulay said, " This revo- 
lution, of all revolutions the least violent, has been of all revolu- 
tions the most beneficent." In these serious and often bloody con- 
tentions, English liberty had its birth. And of all the liberties of 
the British realm the liberty of worship came with the most delib- 
erateness and difficulty. It was this for which the Pilgrims, and 
in some measure the Puritans, of America were groping, just be- 
fore the daybreak after a dark night, and that they were forced to 
come to America to attain. In a new and remote land it was be- 
yond their ken and their power for a hundred and fifty years. 
But the germs that had been planted in the great charters did 
struggle to the surface through the unbroken sod of new world 
politics, and began to bloom in some of the constitutions of the 
American colonies as soon as they became independent states. 

Doubtless because of the Dutch history that was behind it, as 
well as because of its mixed and commercial population, New York 
was the first to clearly declare the principle in a written constitu- 
tion. On a Sunday in 1777, at Kingston, on the very firing line of 
the Revolution, the State wrote in its first Constitution these 
splendid sentences : 

(After continuing the Common and Statute Law of 
England) That all such parts of the said Common Law, 
and all such of the said Statutes and Acts aforesaid, or 
parts thereof, as may be construed to establish or main- 
tain any particular denomination of Christians or their 
Ministers ... be and they are hereby abrogated 
and rejected. 



66 

This Convention doth further in the name and by the 
authority of the Good People of this State, ordain, deter- 
mine, and declare that the free Exercise and Enjoyment 
of Religious Profession and Worship, without discrimina- 
tion or preference, shall forever hereafter be allowed 
within this State to all mankind. 

Vermont, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia from the be- 
ginning, and a little later Maine and Rhode Island, lined up with 
New York. But the distances were too great, the communications 
too difficult, the old traditions and attachments too strong, and the 
departure too drastic, for all to do so. The constitution of South 
Carolina declared that the " Christian Protestant religion " was the 
" established religion " of that state. The constitution of North 
Carolina excluded from office all " nonbelievers in the Protestant 
religion " ; and that of Delaware made all officials subscribe to a 
" confession of faith." At first the constitutions of Maryland, 
Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and later that of Connecticut, 
provided by taxation or otherwise for the support of the Protestant 
Christian religion, with more or less toleration of other religions. 

The nation as a whole, if there was a nation, had never dealt 
with the subject. The early conventions or conferences looking 
to cooperation or federation had been engrossed by demands for 
safety which were immediate and imperative, rather than by the- 
ories of freedom which obviously had to wait upon security against 
foes from without. The Declaration of Independence did not men- 
tion it and the Articles of Confederation passed it by. But by the 
time the patriots had won bloody battles for independence, had 
weathered the " critical period " and come to the making of the 
Federal Constitution, the atmosphere had much cleared in all the 
states. It was assumed all around that primarily the question was 
one for the states. The assumption accommodated the differences 
of religious opinion, but it was well, anyway. Many constitu- 
tions that are nearly uniform and near to the people are stronger 
than one that is farther away. The convention passed the matter 
over, but with the understanding that the first Congress would in- 
itiate an amendment to the Constitution prohibiting Congress from 
making any law respecting an establishment of religion or imped- 
ing the free exercise thereof. This Congress did, the states ratified, 
and the result was the first amendment to the organic law of the 
nation. The very limited treatment of the subject by the Federal 
Constitution has of course restricted the number, though not the 
importance, of the related decisions in the Federal courts. Beyond 



67 

the affirmance and elucidation of the principle that the state and 
the church are to be wholly independent of each other in America, 
the Federal courts have necessarily had little to say. But that has 
been quite enough. 

The states, with but one or two exceptions, have not only set 
forth the principle in their constitutions, but they have enlarged and 
applied it with continually increasing emphasis. The older New 
England and southern states have moved slowly, and history tells 
the reason why. As the original states have amended their con- 
stitutions they have asserted the doctrine with more and more ex- 
plicitness. The newer states, in making their first constitutions, 
have gone far beyond the older states in specifying details. The 
laws have followed the constitutions, and the decisions of the 
courts have followed the laws. The states have enacted laws to 
accomplish the intent of the constitutions, and the courts have had 
to interpret these constitutional provisions and laws ; so the statutes 
and the decisions are more abundant, detailed, and exact in the 
newer than in the older states. With all of this lawmaking there 
are, of course, some minor differences in the legislation and in the rea- 
soning of judges, but there is no discordant note about the main 
principle, and the trend as to details is strongly in one direction. 

It is not difficult to see why the outworking of the fundamental 
principle has borne more sharply and oftener upon the school sys- 
tem than upon any other activity of the people. So the resulting 
statutes and decisions largely relate to schools. This was not 
foreseen, but if it had been there would have been more rather 
than less support for the main proposition. It was not much of a 
matter so far as education was concerned when the people were 
reasonably homogeneous, when there was none to object to what- 
ever was done in the schools, because it affronted no one, and when 
little general authority and no public money were given to the 
support of the schools. But there has been a great change since 
the day sixty years ago when Herbert Spencer declared that the 
taxation of one man's property to educate another man's children 
was robbery. One must be indifferent about American history and 
institutions who does not see that our universal passion for uni- 
versal education and the splendid system of common schools of 
every grade that serves every square mile of our territory, are not 
only the products and the constant beneficiaries of governments 
which are not limited by sectarian differences, but that they have 
been blessed very often by the benedictions of churches which re- 
fused to be cursed by political manipulations. 

3 



68 

The application of the principle to the different situations and 
incidents of administration is often involved in uncertainty, as the 
diverse laws and decisions show very abundantly. The practical 
question, so far as the schools are concerned with this matter, 
has been and will be, whether this, that, or the other thing in the 
schools is violative of the fundamental principle that the state and 
the church shall be completely independent and that the conscience 
and the worship of every one shall be absolutely free. Coming to the 
specific question whether Bible reading, hymn singing, and prayer in 
the schools constitute a sectarian influence, are ivorship, impinge upon 
freedom of conscience, use public property, money, or authority for 
the promotion of sectarian ends, or otherwise violate the basic prin- 
ciple, it must be said that the decisions of the courts of last resort 
in the different states seem in point of numbers to be not very un- 
equally divided, but it must be added that the more thoroughly con- 
sidered cases and the weight and trend of authority are to the effect 
that the course of the sects determines what is sectarian and that 
what they make sectarian is within the prohibition. 

The State of New York has never been disposed to carry details 
into her Constitution, and for this and for another reason the courts 
of this State have not often been called upon to determine issues 
growing out of the operations of the schools. The other reason is that 
for seventy- five years the law of the State has required the Super- 
intendent of Public Instruction, now the Commissioner of Education, 
to determine such issues, and has provided that his determinations 
thereof should not " be called in question in any court or in any other 
place." The decisions, from the incumbency of General John A. Dix, 
in 1838, to the present, have been that there could be no religious ex- 
ercises of a sectarian character in the schools during school hours, 
when objections were offered, and it has been assumed that reading 
the Bible, singing religious hymns, and prayers are sectarian. There 
has been no impediment where those directly interested in the school 
raised no objection, and such exercises have been sustained, perhaps 
illogically, when held in the schoolhouse but outside of school hours, 
even though objection was offered. In 1889 the writer, as Superin- 
tendent, held that the distinguishing garb of an order of religious 
and sectarian workers could not be worn by teachers in the common 
schools because of its sectarian church influence. In view of the 
importance of the matter and the persistence of feeling and comment 
about it, the writer as Commissioner of Education has, in recent years, 
cooperated with those who differed with him to secure the decision 



69 

of the Court of Appeals upon the question, with the result that the 
decision of the Superintendent has been upheld by the court of last 
resort (184 N. Y. 421). 

The amended Constitution of 1894 provides (art. 9, sec. 1) that 
" The Legislature shall provide for the maintenance and support of a 
system of free common schools wherein all the children of the State 
may be educated," and section 4 of the same article provides that 
" Neither the State nor any subdivision thereof, shall use its property 
or credit or any public money, or authorize or permit either to be 
used, directly or indirectly, in aid or maintenance, other than for ex- 
amination or inspection, of any school or institution of learning 
wholly or in part under the control or direction of any religious 
denomination, or in which any denominational tenet or doctrine is 
taught." 

The committee on education which reported this section to the Con- 
stitutional Convention of 1894 accompanied it with a report in which 
they said, in part, " The arguments in favor of such a provision are, 
in our opinion, conclusive; and the objection that it will result in 
making the schools ' godless,' or that such a constitutional prohibition 
would imply on the part of the people enacting it hostility, or even 
indifference, to religion, seems to us to be both groundless and 
absurd." The committee met the question as to whether this pro- 
vision, prohibiting the allotment of State moneys to schools " in 
which any denominational tenet or doctrine is taught," would inter- 
fere with the reading of the Bible in the public schools, by saying, 
" the words proposed by us can not by any reasonable interpretation 
or construction be taken to prohibit the reading of the Bible in the 
public schools." 

In other words, the State does not object to Bible reading and re- 
ligious exercises not of a distinctly sectarian character in the schools, 
although sectarian objections to parts of the Bible and to definite 
exercises might force public authority to hold that the parts objected 
to were not permissible, on the ground that sectarian protests had 
made them sectarian. The Constitutional Convention definitely re- 
fused to impair, or in any way limit, the broad principle that there 
shall be no dependence whatever between the state and the church. 
In approving the proposition of its committee it expressed the desire 
of the State to encourage religion, and adopted the view that it was 
doing so by refusing to permit church organizations to be corrupted 
by what they might do to get the financial aid of the State ; and 
practically left it to sectarianists, as it seemed obliged to do, to limit 



7° 

religious influences in the schools by urging that specific religious 
exercises are sectarian in character. Happily there are not many 
churches which are much given to embracing the opportunity. And 
still more happily, perhaps, there are very few school officers or 
teachers who are at all disposed to offer provocation which will 
arouse objections. 

The charter of the city of New York contains the following sec- 
tion: 

No school shall be entitled to receive any portion of 
the school moneys in which the religious doctrines or 
tenets of any particular Christian or other religious sect 
shall be taught, inculcated or practised, or in which any 
book or books, containing compositions favorable or pre- 
judicial to the particular doctrines or tenets of any par- 
ticular Christian or other religious sect shall be used, or 
which shall teach the doctrines or tenets of any other relig- 
ious sect, or which shall refuse to permit the visits and ex- 
aminations provided for in this chapter. But nothing herein 
contained shall authorize the Board of Education or the 
school board of any borough to exclude the whole 
Scriptures, without note or comment, or any selections 
therefrom, from any of the schools provided for by this 
chapter; but it shall not be competent for the said Board 
of Education to decide what version, if any, of the Holy 
Scriptures, without note or comment, shall be used in any 
of the schools; provided that nothing herein contained 
shall be so construed as to violate the rights of con- 
science, as secured by the Constitution of this State and 
of the United States. 

This reaches back to an interesting history of a long period when 
the " Free School Society," an organization of public-spirited citizens 
devoted to religious and moral ends, controlled the schools of the 
city, and it is the legal expression of an agreement which marked the 
culmination of a heated controversy over religious exercises in the 
schools that agitated the city seventy years ago. It has held a place 
in the city charter ever since. It was carried into the revised school 
law of 1 85 1, the consolidation act of 1882, the Greater New York 
charter of 1897, and the revised charter of 1901. So the people of 
the city and the Legislature have held to it very tenaciously. It for- 
bids the doctrines or tenets of any sect in the schools, but declares that 
this shall not be construed to authorize the Board of Education to 
exclude the Scriptures. It does not affirmatively authorize the read- 
ing of the Scriptures. It was not necessary that it should call at- 
tention to its good purpose not to override the Constitution. It ante- 



7i 

dates amendments to the State Constitution which bear very directly 
upon the matter. It seems to have been acquiesced in, for the Scrip- 
tures are read very generally in the schools of the city and there has 
been relatively little controversy over it. It will be quite as well if the 
schools of the second city of the world are allowed to proceed in a 
spirit of toleration and conciliation, and are permitted to appeal to 
the spiritual side of the lives of the millions of their children without 
being allowed to use any sectarian doctrines to make a proselyte 
of any child ; and it will be quite as well, also, if this may go on 
without too much legal and official exploitation of the meaning of 
each clause and word of the statute. 

So it seems that in the State of New York at large the 
Scriptures, hymns, and prayer may have a place in the schools where 
no objection is made by a party in interest; that objections to Bible 
reading, or Christian hymns, or the Lord's Prayer are regarded ; but 
that in the charter of the city of New York there is a section designed 
to encourage such exercises after a sincere effort to remove any sec- 
tarian features therefrom. 

As already observed, the other states uphold the separation of 
church and state, the freedom of conscience, the right of resistance to 
taxation for any denominational end, and the nonsectarian character 
of the schools, with complete emphasis and accord ; but they differ in 
their attitudes as to what sectarianism is, and, therefore, as to what 
violates the principle. The briefest statement as to their differing 
attitudes will have to suffice. In Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, 
Massachusetts, Michigan and Texas, religious exercises have been 
upheld or winked at by the courts dodging the main issue. The Iowa 
case leaves the matter largely to teachers, provided " the burden of 
taxation is not increased and children are not required to attend the 
exercises." The Kansas case sustained a teacher in reading the 
twenty-third Psalm and repeating the Lord's Prayer " to quiet the 
pupils " without requiring them to participate. In Kentucky the 
court found relief in the fact that the exercise was only a simple 
prayer composed by the teacher, and that the pupils were not required 
to attend. The Texas case seems to turn upon the fact that attend- 
ance was not required. The Michigan case relates not to the use of 
the Bible at first hand, but to a textbook composed of extracts there- 
from, which the teacher was upheld in using, but upon condition that 
she refrained from comments and, upon request, excused attend- 
ance. These cases tacitly admit that if attendance were compulsory 
there would be an infraction of the constitutional principle. It is 
admissible for me to say that I do not believe in either the advisability 



72 

or the validity of any school exercises which can be upheld only upon 
the ground that children who are conscientiously opposed to them may 
go out in the hall when they are held. 

The Ohio case treats a troublesome matter laboriously, and the de- 
cision, by a divided court, leaves the matter to the discretion of the 
city board of education, and clearly avoids the real issue. 

The Pennsylvania courts have held that the boards charged with 
the management of the schools may say what exercises may be held. 
The school law of the state now provides that " No teacher in any 
public school of this commonwealth shall wear in said school or whilst 
engaged in the performance of his or her duty as such teacher, any 
dress, mark, emblem or insignia indicating the fact that such teacher 
is a member or adherent of any religious order, sect or denomina- 
tion." This was held unconstitutional in Lancaster county, but the 
superior court of the state has since reversed the lower court and 
sustained the statute. 

In Illinois, Nebraska, and Wisconsin, in cases that are quite recent 
and that are more thoroughly considered than any others that are in 
point, it was held that such exercises as we are considering are sec- 
tarian and are excluded by the constitutions of those states. It must 
be remembered, of course, that the constitutions of Illinois, Nebraska, 
and Wisconsin go further than those of Maine, Massachusetts, and 
Michigan in specifying the practices that are unallowable ; but it may 
also be said that the natural progress of constitution making in this 
connection in the United States is altogether in the direction of the 
more drastic exclusion of any cause of complaint ; and that the recent 
settlement of absolutely heterogeneous peoples, combined with the 
more plastic conditions of the laws and the latitude of the courts in 
the newer states, have in general led their judges to reason the whole 
matter out more freely, logically and exhaustively than the conditions 
in the older states have ordinarily forced their judges to do. In any 
event, the questions at issue have had no such painstaking judicial 
treatment and, as it seems to me, no such logical reasoning and in- 
evitable result as by the highest courts of Illinois, Nebraska, and Wis- 
consin. 

The grounds upon which these courts reach their conclusions are 
that in this country there is absolute separation between church and 
state; that the state is not to intervene between man and his God; 
that the state is to do nothing which binds conscience or regulates 
worship ; that even Christians differ as to what is the true Bible and 
what is the true form of the Lord's Prayer, and that versions and 



73 

passages which stir the devotion of one, stir the wrath of another; 
that Jews disbelieve in the Testament which is most precious to Chris- 
tians, and that they are entitled to hospitality and oneness with all the 
rest in our citizenship ; that those who are neither Christians nor Jews 
are, under our laws, entitled to the same equality as all others; 
that the law knows no religious distinctions and affords identical pro- 
tection to men and women of all denominations or of no denomina- 
tion ; and that the fact that tax-supported common schools are the 
most ordinary expression of the beneficence of the state, and withal 
so vital, makes it particularly important that there shall be nothing 
about them that can offend the faith of any one, whether the thing 
that offends one seems reasonable or unreasonable to another. 

The facts of the matter are not likely to be much changed ; the 
logic of the matter is not likely to be overthrown ; the law which has 
resulted seems likely to be yet more drastic in its details and destined 
to be yet more universal in its applications. Under conscientious ob- 
jections by any party in interest, dogmatic religious instruction, that 
is, instruction which is peculiar to one class and obnoxious to another 
class, will not be permitted in the American public schools. 

Excellent people have proposed many devices to avoid this result. 
This is particularly so since there has been such a falling off of re- 
ligious exercises in the homes, and since the churches have ceased to 
be the only exponents of the intellectual and moral activities of the 
people. It has been proposed to leave all education to the churches 
and to subsidize the churches in proportion to the quantity of secular 
instruction they may give. From the standpoint of the state, of the 
church, and of education, the suggestion is untenable. Education 
can not be limited by sectarianism ; churches can not struggle with one 
another for public funds, without inviting the curse of it; the state 
can not encourage religious separateness rather than unity without in- 
viting its own overthrow. It has been supposed by some that religious 
exercises might be held in the schools if objectors were not required 
to be present or to participate. But the school claims unity as much 
as does the state. The objecting parent is not to see his child ostra- 
cized or put at any disadvantage, by what the majority hold to be his 
own singularity, his narrowness, or his stubbornness. Each child has 
not only the same right in all the general exercises of the school, 
but also the same right not to be separated from his fellows for any 
conscientious reason. The school may do nothing to which one may 
object upon strictly religious grounds. There have been efforts to 
get around the principle by holding exercises before or after school 
hours. This has been done at times in New York for an hundred 



74 

years. While it generally quiets objections, it is doubtful if it could 
proceed against a tenacious objection. The schoolhouse is public 
property : this property can hardly be used for any purpose to which 
the conscience of a patron would compel him to object. The teacher 
is an employee of the public and must confine himself to activities 
which are not repugnant to the conscientious thinking of the par- 
ents and the pupils. 

It has been proposed to separate the pupils into sectarian groups and 
invite the churches to send in their clergymen to instruct their affiliated 
groups in dogmatic religion, and it has also been proposed to excuse 
from the schools, on given hours each week, the pupils who wish to go 
to the churches for religious instruction. Neither of these proposi- 
tions is permissible in the United States. A procedure which is com- 
mon to all is imperative in the schools; more, rather than less, time 
is required for the secular work of the schools; and no church can be 
allowed to use any part of the machinery of the schools, and there- 
fore of the state, to secure attendance upon its ministrations. The 
complete* separateness of the church from the state, as represented 
in the tax-supported schools, is fundamental, and all of its conse- 
quences must be accepted. 

Yet it must be admitted that these consequences are often unfortu- 
nate. Even though religion be a matter of feeling more than of 
teaching, it would be a pity if a teacher who feels so disposed should 
be barred from ministering to the spiritual needs of children under 
his care, and perhaps more of a pity if, through any mistaken con- 
ceptions of the principle or its application, the schools should fail to do 
what they may easily do in the way of exercises that would make for 
a religious culture which may be independent of and above all secta- 
rianism. Whether the Bible is a book of divine revelation and inspira- 
tion, as most Americans believe, or whether it is, as some think, only 
the finest, the deepest, the wisest, and the most sacred selection of 
historical facts, and illustrative allegory, and lofty idealism, and sub- 
lime injunction, which all the literature of the world contains, 
it is deplorable if children who will not hear it in any other way, do 
not hear something of it in the schools ; and it is no less deplorable 
when children who know of it through other channels find that for 
some reason which they do not understand it is not allowed in the 
affairs of the schools. 

There is another view of the matter which is entitled to considera- 
tion. There is on the part of a great Christian people a distinct sacri- 
fice of Christian teaching to political equality, civic order, and reli- 
gious freedom, which ought to be more universally appreciated than it 



75 

is. Who can say that in feeling and in expression the people of the 
United States are not a Christian people ? It was the energy and the 
irresistible expansiveness of Christianity that discovered the new 
world. The first old-world banner that was planted upon its shores 
bore the cross, which is the world-wide symbol of Christianity. The 
Pilgrims of the Mayflower, and the Puritans from whatever land, not 
excepting the Jesuits of the Mother Church of Rome, who broke out 
new roads of all kinds in America, got their courage and their direc- 
tion from the Bible and from Christianity. Christianity has raised 
the structure and fought the battles of the Republic. It enters into 
all our state papers and it runs through all our laws. It is avowed in 
Washington's farewell address and in Lincoln's emancipation proc- 
lamation. None can enter upon a public office without thinking of 
it. It is upon our coinage. We recognize it upon all public occasions. 
It is as much the basis of our home life and of our social system as it 
is of our public life and our legal systems. We invoke its praise at the 
christening, its sanction at the wedding, its hope at death, and its con- 
solation at the funeral. Its churches are on almost every block. Its 
spirit has given rise to about all of our poetry, and its teachings are 
the governing motive in nine-tenths of our prose literature. The 
distinct debt of American education to Christianity can never be fully 
estimated, much less described. Our early elementary schools were 
from the beginning associated with Christian churches, and nine- 
tenths of our colleges and universities had their rise and found their 
trend in the activities of Christianity. When a mighty people, with 
all this in the intellectual and moral history which they cherish, hold 
it in abeyance only that their government may rise above all bias and 
their schools give offense to none, the least that can be said is that all 
who are not of the Christian faith are bound to have a well-filled 
measure of appreciation of the generosity and patriotism of those 
who are. Doubtless it is but just to say that they do have it. 

Of course the Jews do differentiate themselves from the Chris- 
tians. In recent years they have come to be an influential factor in 
American life. They are not contentious. They would live in con- 
cord. The Hebrew Bible is half the Bible of the Christians, and, 
while they do not accept the historic facts of the other half, they are 
above all criticism of the spirit and influence of it. They are appre- 
ciative of educational opportunity and make the most of it. It is 
seldom that a Jew has made himself an irritating factor in the opera- 
tions of the schools, and the Jewish people, individually and collec- 
tively, have been magnanimous supporters of the schools. 



7 6 

The American state reasons that, by refusing to become the bone 
of contention between religious sects, it will promote the freedom of 
religious feeling and the expansion of worship, and it desires to do 
that because it knows that its own structure and stability depend upon 
the moral character and the religious attributes of its people. It re- 
fuses special favor to, and repels the slightest dictation by, any one 
church, because it would vitalize all churches and gather to itself 
the advantage which comes from the moral or religious work of all. 
The state would have religious peace that it may have more and better 
religious work. Therefore the state does not object to religious, as 
distinguished from sectarian, influences in the schools. Indeed, by all 
that the state does in its own affairs, it encourages such exercises. It 
only steps in, in the interest of religious peace, to stop exercises which 
accord with the beliefs of one sect when they are protested . by 
another sect. The exercises are as common and go about as far as 
the religious unity or magnanimity of the patrons of the schools will 
permit. When that limit is reached, so much of religious instruction 
or ceremony as is sectarian has to stop. But, happily, in most places 
the limit is never reached. 

It might be arranged that for all practical purposes the limit never 
would be reached in any place. If the Protestant and Roman Cath- 
olic and Jewish churches would agree upon a collection of Bible selec- 
tions and hymns and prayers which might be drawn upon for use in 
the schools, the cases where there would be any one to object would 
be very rare. Where but one of these churches is represented in the 
schools there is none to object. In innumerable cases, where two or 
all of them are represented, the teachers are sane enough to do noth- 
ing to offend and the patrons are broad enough to see the advantage 
of acquiescence, or they are sufficiently uninformed about theology to 
be indifferent about it. Disagreement about the matter is, on the 
whole, not common, and such as there is would ordinarily be removed 
if the leaders of religious sects could harmonize their differences 
about so much of religion as may be desirable in the operations of 
the schools. 

It seems to laymen that they should do at least so much! There 
are versions of the Bible which have minor differences. It would 
seem as though historical and religious scholarship ought to harmonize 
these differences ; and if that is not possible, it is to be remembered 
that we have more in common than in difference, and that there are 
parts of Scripture enough which are identical in all versions, to meet 
the needs of the schools. The same as to songs and prayers. These 



77 

things are large factors in the life of the schools. There is no need 
of there being anything about them to prejudice any sect, and it is 
to be hoped that the spirituality and the patriotism of the churches 
will lead to that complete religious cooperation in the training of the 
young which will continue to enlarge the moral accomplishments of 
the land where they are already greater than in any other country in 
the world. 

While this seems very desirable, it may still be said that, even if it 
is not to be, the situation is by no means as hopeless as some are dis- 
posed to think. It will take more objections than the ultrasectarian- 
ists or the few who pretend to think that they are opposed to all re- 
ligion, can ever offer, and more power than any government in Amer- 
ica will ever have, to keep all religion out of the schools. With ex- 
ceptions that are so rare that they do not count, the teachers are men 
and women who recognize and reverence a Supreme Being, and of 
course that fact is continually expressed in the life of the school. 
The work of the school itself can not be carried on without constant 
recognition of the relations between the created world and the 
Creator, which are accepted and felt by practically all the people of 
the country, and which in one way or another enter into most of the 
activities of the country. The organization and discipline, and the 
consequent feeling and spirit of the American schools, go deeper than 
mere toleration or only formal politeness, and enter the domain of 
reason and result, of cause and effect, whether we wish it so or not. 
People in the schools, as out, will not divest themselves of their reli- 
gion. The state will never ask them to do so. The prohibition of theo- 
logical sectarianism does not and can not run against a religion 
that does not seek worldly power and is as broad in its impulses and 
sympathies as the universe itself. The history, the political policies, 
and the common thinking and practice of the country, have made it 
wholly impossible that the schools shall be godless. How far from 
sectarian narrowness the schools shall go may depend upon the state, 
but how godly they shall be depends not upon the state but upon 
the people themselves. Things settle that which no state can control 
if it would, and which no American state would if it could. 

But there is a great field outside of, and close by that of, sectarian 
religion. People who browse in it sometimes get over the rather in- 
distinct line between the two without realizing much change in the 
herbage. This field embraces " good morals," the " common morali- 
ties," conduct which one must observe if he expects to prosper, if he 
is to make the most of himself, if he is to gain the regard of his fel- 



78 

lows in school, or in business, or in any other relation of life. It in- 
cludes " common honesty," truth, industry, frugality, generosity, 
patriotism, and all of the virtues which contribute to and are necessary 
to " decent living." These virtues are approved so universally that 
there is no room for conscience to discriminate between them or 
theology to contend about them. They are observed in all good 
homes and upheld in all civilized life. They have always been taught 
by precept and example in all schools. They have not been taught by 
formal courses, and at stated hours, and with pedagogical methods, as 
other subjects have been taught. But they have been taught no less, 
and ordinarily much more, effectively than the other matters. A 
teacher can tolerate a failure in mathematics, but not a failure in re- 
spect for his office or in conduct which is necessary to the good order 
of the school. So good morals, or at least good behavior, are taught 
in everything that is done and through every hour of the day. No 
one objects. Indeed, if any criticism is heard it is that good morals 
are not taught sufficiently and good conduct not enforced severely 
enough. 

It must be said that children are not treated with as much severity 
as they used to be, either at home or in school. Parents do less to 
exact the respect and obedience of children than parents formerly did, 
and teachers have evolved theories which come a little too near letting 
the children manage the school. The evils of it all have begun to 
show themselves. The result is a demand that more morals, if not 
more religion, be taught in the schools. And it is proposed to do this 
formally, at definite periods, by a graded course of instruction suited 
to all ages and running through the life at the school, and by text- 
books and lessons, in the same way that other studies are pursued. 
This movement has sprung up and made headway in all of the good 
school countries. We have not led in it, but we have not held aloof 
from it. It has found favor in the eyes of those who think there has 
been too much religion taught in the schools of Germany, as well as 
of those who think there has been too little in the schools of America. 
In 1909 the National Education Association created a committee of 
leading members to consider the subject, and the committee a year 
later presented a well considered report. Setting forth the pros and 
cons of the matter, the committee recommended a course of graded 
instruction in morals and presented a suggestive course. 

I should be very glad to present this course of study in its entirety 
in order to show clearly what is contemplated by leading and repre- 
sentative teachers of America who have given this subject careful con- 



79 

sideration. But the length of the proposed course, covering as it does 
more than fifty pages of typewritten matter, makes it impracticable to 
insert it here. The course covers every grade of school work from 
the kindergarten through the high school. In the kindergarten it 
treats of such subjects as obedience, cooperation, helpfulness, atten- 
tion, kindness, cheerfulness, sociability and manners. In the first pri- 
mary grade it adds such subjects as cleanliness, self-control, love of 
parents ; in the second grade it adds such as truthfulness, love of 
home, patriotism ; in the third grade it adds honesty, respect 
for parents, teachers, officials, strangers, responsibility, and some 
phases of civics; in the fourth grade it adds self-reliance, the rights 
of children, and more civics ; in the fifth grade it adds industry, 
patience, usefulness ; in the sixth grade it adds courage, perseverance, 
self-control, contentment, and more civic rights and duties ; in the 
seventh grade it adds comradeship, fidelity, temperance and other 
habits ; in the eighth grade the course extends to determination, ambi- 
tion, courtesy, purity, consecration to duty, heroism, etc. 

In the first year in the high school the course treats of the different 
relations of individuals to one another as well as of the relations of 
individuals to society as a whole, and to the institutions of society. 
It lays stress upon the reciprocal obligations of individuals in society 
and in business and professional life. In the second year in the high 
school, it goes into such matters as the duties of parents to children, 
of children to parents, and of children to one another. It treats 
of the family and discusses the economics of the home as well as 
the great value of the home to society and the state. In the third 
year it treats of the choice of vocation and of the relations of work 
to individual habits, as well as to intellectual and moral progress. In 
the fourth year of the high school, the course goes deeper into social 
and industrial economics, and into the obligations and rights which 
individuals owe to the state and are entitled to enjoy therefrom. It 
goes so far as to treat of the state as a promoter of character and 
a protector of health. 

This elaborate course of study contemplates progressive lessons, 
covering specific moral virtues, at stated times, during all the years 
that the child is in the public elementary or secondary schools. With 
the greatest respect for the leading and capable members of the 
teachers' guild who have prepared it, and with the warmest apprecia- 
tion of their assiduity in doing so, I can not help thinking that about 
all that they propose ought to be impressed upon the pupils of the 
lower schools without so much analytical discussion of the reasons 



8o 

for it, and that such discussion ought to find its place in the colleges, 
universities, and training schools for teachers. 

Such propositions as this have not been without decided opposition. 
It has been said that to be effective, moral training must be by prac- 
tice rather than by preachment ; that a difficulty will arise as to what 
may be brought in under the name of morals ; that teachers will not 
care to accept the role of arbiters and exemplars in determining dif- 
ferences over moral questions ; that if moral instruction is to be pre- 
arranged and exact, the preparation of the teachers must not only 
be so but must accord with it ; that, if teachers are to be forced into 
such teaching, they will more and more reflect their denominational- 
ism; that teachers will be discussing how much truth, or obedience, 
or generosity, shall be put into the course to result in suitably balanced 
moral character, just as they now discuss how much English, or 
mathematics, or chemistry, may be allowed or must be had to assure 
a suitably cultured intellectual one ; that in assigning the lesson for 
the next day teachers will say, " tomorrow we are going to learn 
to be generous," etc. ; and that the spontaneity and universality of 
moral culture will be lessened by a procedure that will be as much 
less resultful as it is more formal and exact than at present. 

While there is some exaggeration in these objections, they are not 
wholly without reason. Indeed, the opposition to the proposition is 
not without substantial reason. There should be no formal courses 
added to the routine of the schools without the most imperative need. 
The exact training of teachers for analytical treatment of the subject 
is a large matter, and without it, and very likely with it, new issues 
will crop out of the undertaking. It is at least uncertain about there 
being any good result from the teachers teaching or the children 
learning morals in a formal way until the pupil is old enough to 
discuss the details freely and on a basis of reasonable equality with 
the teacher, if there is to be any discussion at all. In other words, 
formal morals seems to me hardly a proper subject for the elemen- 
tary school age, and not surely one for the secondary schools. It 
would seem suited to the colleges and particularly to the teachers 
training schools. Children dislike preachments even more than do 
grown people, and grown people are sufficiently opposed to them. 
Children are to be subject to wholesome direction and regime. They 
need the concrete more than the abstract, the practical more than the 
theoretical, when it comes to conduct. And it is well for us to recall 
that it looks as though the nations which have been the most exact 
in training their young in specific forms of conduct, have been the 



8i 

most backward in civilization, if not in the moral culture which makes 
balanced and efficient men and women. 

With the quite apparent disposition of parents to transfer a good 
share of their own moral responsibility concerning their children to 
the teachers, there is a somewhat surprising willingness of teachers 
to accept the burden. Probably it would be more exact to say that the 
educationists are accepting it for the teachers without consulting 
them. At the best, the burden of the teachers in the day schools is 
heavy enough without giving them the load which the father and 
mother, and the family physician, and the sanitary engineer, and the 
minister, and the Sunday School teacher, ought to shoulder. It may 
be well to suggest, also, that there are some things about the physio- 
logical and moral evolution of the child, and in the relations of the 
sexes, to which teachers are not adapted ; which the schools ought to 
refuse ; and which, if the teachers are disposed to assume, the parents 
ought to say are none of their business. If every responsibility con- 
cerning the child is to be placed upon, and assumed by, the teachers, 
as the pedagogical experts, bundled together, are urging upon us, then 
the schools ought to have the children all the time, night and day, and 
until they are grown ; ought to wash and comb and dress and feed 
them ; ought to have a department store and divers kinds of 
physicians and trained nurses to meet their physical needs ; ought 
to keep them from the worldly pleasure of thumping their fellows 
and being thumped ; ought to maintain a complete corps of eccle- 
siastics to provide them with discriminating theological prescriptions, 
and ought to anticipate and determine for them everything that there 
is any probability of their having to settle in all their lives. Of 
course, in the end, there would be a lot of weaklings without physical, 
intellectual, or moral substance enough to hold their own, much less 
without strength to add anything to American life. 

What is imperatively needed in the elementary schools is the 
closest possible approach to simplicity and directness in an environ- 
ment that is healthy and attractive. No philosophy of morality can 
profitably be discussed there. Attractive surroundings, a clean 
building, a systematic procedure, a firm and just management, un- 
hesitating obedience, a cheerful spirit, an interest in sport, and per- 
sistent drill in the fundamentals of definite knowledge, to the end 
that the child may gain a real grasp upon the implements which will 
enable him to gain more knowledge and do for himself, are the 
factors which are required in every elementary school. If the 
teaching is to make any deep or enduring impression, certainly if it 



82 

is to germinate energy and power, the teacher must be the living 
embodiment of the intellectual and moral qualities that are to be 
desired. 

There is not much more room for debating the moralities in the 
secondary than in the primary schools. If the primary schools are 
helpless about preachments, the secondary schools are resentful, flip- 
pant, and scornful about them. The pupils have just learned that 
they know a little something, without having learned how little it is. 
The blood has grown warm and the spirit very free. It may be well 
to explain the reasons for some things so that the pupil who wants 
to think otherwise will have difficulty in doing so, but it will be well 
to expect opposition and rebellion against a good many of the prin- 
ciples of the moral code. There will certainly be little appetite for 
the philosophy of it. In the absence of systematic organization and 
a measure of control and direction which provides a sufficient motive 
for wholesome respect, and for some diligence in work, there will 
be indifference, rebellion, and ridicule behind the teacher's back, if 
there is not before his face. But if the exactions are severe but not 
unreasonable; if the atmosphere of the place is serious without being 
somber; if the teacher is one who likes boys and girls and has the 
judgment to know what they need both in work and play, they will 
not only grow steadily in rounded and efficient character, but their 
appreciation of what the teacher actually does for them will continue 
to enlarge as long as they may live. There is plenty of room for 
the practical and forceful application of moral principles; there is 
some room for explaining them; but it seems difficult to find much 
room for questioning and answering about them, even in the sec- 
ondary schools. 

Not all primary pupils go to the secondary schools, and not many 
pupils of the secondary schools go to college. It is the burden 
of the lower schools to cooperate with the homes, the churches, and 
the other institutions of society, to fix good habits so firmly that one 
can not depart from them without self-consciousness of wrong. This 
is to be accomplished by practice more than by precept ; not by prac- 
tice without precept, but by practice more than by precept. If the 
practice is firm and exact and persistent enough, habits will probably 
become fixed and they will be likely to endure, whether pupils go to 
college or not. If they do go to college, they may very well study 
the history of mankind and inquire about the structure of society, 
and philosophize about deep hidden springs of moral conduct. If 
they do this and nothing more, it will not avail much, but if they 



83 

associate it with practical plans for earning a living, it will result in 
characters whose self-satisfactions and contributions to mankind will 
average a little larger and a little nobler than those of others who 
have had to get on without the larger opportunities. 

There seems some reason for suspecting that those who would 
profit most from definite courses of morals in the schools of all 
grades would be the teachers. Not because they stand so much in 
need of more exact training in morals, but because they have the 
maturity and the rather natural proclivities which would appreciate 
and profit by them. Of course this is only equivalent to saying in 
another way that the profitable and potential places for this work 
are in the colleges and in the schools for training teachers. That 
is equally true of religion that is not limited by sectarianism. Of 
course the place for theological study is in the churches, so far as 
the people like it, and more particularly in the church schools. But 
whether the preaching of morals to immature minds, in schools 
where obedience to regime is imperative, is wise or not, it has been 
made clear enough by human experience that the enforcement of 
sound principles and good practices is resultful. 

If it is difficult to differentiate morals from religion, it is danger- 
ous to separate ethics from morals. Ethics refers to form or 
behavior without very much reference to the impulses which impel 
conduct, the motives which shape it, or the requirements which 
exact it. The thing is often expressed, and very likely erroneously 
expressed, in the word culture. It springs more from our thinking 
than from our feeling. It relates to appearances and seeks to 
delight. It studies orderly procedure and agreeable associations. 
It conciliates rivalries, obviates conflicts, and in a thousand ways 
tempers and enriches the life of a people who cultivate it ; but all 
the same, it is subject to the peril of intellectual and moral insi- 
pidity. Therefore it is of very considerable concern to the schools. 

Obedience, respect, good behavior, ordinary politeness, are very 
desirable and not any too common among American children. 
Doubtless they are less common than they used to be. Doubtless, 
too, they are less common among the children of America than 
of Europe or Asia. The easily discernible reason is found in their 
training, particularly in the lessening measure of control and com- 
pulsion. But there may be a more fundamental reason. The 
American spirit is independent, but frank and honest. It believes 
in very considerable freedom for the children, as for their elders, 



8 4 

and it looks upon form, when separated from morals, as a super- 
ficial and unsatisfactory thing. Most of us are unwilling to submit 
to a tyranny of mere form, and very generally we are independent 
enough to be governed by the reasons which lie below the surface 
of things. 

Civility, politeness, ceremony, are very desirable, but they are 
attractive only when they honestly express the attributes of the 
life that is beneath them. When ostentatious worship does not 
spring from piety, when social platitudes are made to screen mean- 
ness, when the cover only hides false linings, it is doubtful how 
much of them there had better be. Even though harmless among 
experienced old sinners who see right through them, they have little 
right in the operations of schools that are trying to develop in boys 
and girls moral sense as well as mental acuteness. The American 
people, in overwhelming numbers, and to their great credit, will 
say " train the children to be more respectful and polite, if you can, 
but train them in blunt honesty in any event." Force them to work, 
and that will give them strength of body and of mind. Put them 
into competition and contests, and they will grow in their appre- 
ciation of others. Make them efficient in something, and they will 
not lack in their respect for efficiency in other things. Magnify 
generosity, and there need be no worry about the ways it will find 
to show itself. Of course, the forms of society often aid the think- 
ing; they steady things. They give rise and direction to impulses 
that may fall in with a very desirable social order. But the main 
value of formal expression must come from its association with 
feelings that are too generous and sincere to tolerate misrepresenta- 
tion. Substance will have to go in advance of any display that is 
worthy of imitation. This is deep in the consciousness of the 
people of the United States and it will have to give backbone to the 
policies of their schools. Then morals and ethics will have to keep 
company with each other and the schools will not put formalism 
above, or apart from, the causes that must give it the only value 
it can have. 

It is high time now to gather up our thoughts, and perhaps it 
may be done in the following brief and general statements: 

In recent years nearly all nations have enjoyed unprecedented 
intellectual and commercial progress. That has put an unaccus- 
tomed strain upon the moral sense of nearly all peoples and also has 
worked a very appreciable quickening of the moral sense and the 



85 

religious feelings of the world. Associated with this, and perhaps 
as one result of it, there has been a noticeable democratic advance 
in all parts of the world; with enlarged industrial and commercial 
activity, there has come very considerable mental quickening and a 
new realization of political power; and there has appeared an un- 
wonted and widespread disposition to direct popular education 
toward the popular advantage, as against the advantage of a class, 
and particularly to recognize the vital need of a training in morals 
which should be less under the direction of political authority and, 
also, freer from the control of religious sectarianism. 

In the United States the specific expression of this has appeared 
in demands for more, and more definite, moral instruction in the 
public schools, at a time when it is assumed that such training is less 
common in the homes than it formerly was and when the compelling 
power of the churches is not accepted as it used to be. While- re- 
fusing to believe that there is any lessening of religious feeling, 
indeed, while believing that it is more general and unrestrained, and 
while denying that the home may properly cast the burden of moral 
training upon the schools, it is agreed that the schools are bound 
to recognize the vital need of associating moral and religious with 
intellectual training and of going as far in this as may be without 
violating the fundamental American principle that there shall be no 
dependence between church and state and without giving just cause 
for complaint by any sect. 

But while the state and the church are legally and organically 
independent in America, they are at the same time morally and 
actually interdependent. Experience proves that political freedom, 
and therefore educational and commercial opportunity, on the one 
hand, and religious activity on the other, are enlarged by the assured 
freedom of the church and the state from any meddling by either in 
the affairs of the other. But religion requires the protection of the 
state, and no state can exist without religion. People are naturally 
religious. They reason differently about religion. Different experi- 
ences and differing philosophies about religion have produced sects. 
In this country the state refuses to aid one sect as against another. 
It keeps the religious peace. But, consistently with this, it does all 
that it may do to encourage religion. It does not limit religious 
teaching. It does not, on its own motion, interdict the reading of 
the Bible or other religious exercises in its own schools. As a fact, 
these exercises are very common, and, where this goes on without 
objection, the state is glad. It only " stands fair " between the sects. 



86 

The schools need the influences which cultivate the spirit. Super- 
intendents and teachers will not draw fine distinctions between 
religion and morals and ethics. The people care little about 
theological differences which none but experts can understand and 
about which even they do not seem very clear. The ecclesiastical 
leaders, or others upon their initiative, are practically the only ones 
who raise objections to religious exercises in the schools. The 
exercises are so unobjectionable, the differences are so generally com- 
posed, and objections are so rare, that the unsectarian religious 
influence flows very freely in the schools. It seems to a layman that 
these exercises and influences ought to extend, that the schools 
should be very careful to offend no sect, and that upon that basis 
no factitious sectarian objections ought to be offered. There is no 
version of the Bible or of the Lord's Prayer that can do any harm, 
or will not do great good, to the children in the schools ; the sects 
have more in common than in difference, and there could be no diffi- 
culty in arranging Bible selections which are common to all; and all 
the sects and churches may well feel assured that their conciliatory 
spirit and their helpfulness to this great American purpose and this 
splendid educational aim will be keenly appreciated by the over- 
whelming number of the people of the United States. 

In any event, there is in the schools a great field for moral activity 
to which there can be no sectarian objection, and all schools may well 
cultivate it most assiduously. It is a large and vital factor in the 
object and purpose of the schools. The environment must be at- 
tractive. Sanitary conditions and artistic embellishment will not do 
everything, but they will do much to cultivate the spirits of children ; 
without them the school must at least partly fail ; they are now doing 
a great deal to make it succeed. The textbooks are the best the 
world has ever seen, and they are doing much more. The regime 
and discipline and pastimes are doing still more; and the spirit of 
the teacher doubtless counts for more than all the rest. The training 
schools for teachers have this in mind, and well they may. Every 
operation of the school and everything said or done, no matter 
whether it relates to magnanimity or to mathematics, is bound to 
the culture of spirit as well as to the culture of mind of the pupils. 

All this is more potent than formal courses in morals. It is not 
likely that such formal study of the moral virtues could at all sup- 
plant the universal moral influences that pervade the schools or lessen 
the moral vitality of the homes and churches. If that were the result 
we would pay dear for the innovation. Very likely the experience 



87 

will be that nothing will result from the movement in the direction 
of formal courses in morals so far as the elementary schools are 
concerned ; that something will come of it in high schools and more 
in colleges, and that the largest and best outcome of it will be through 
the influence which the agitation of the subject will have upon the 
professional schools for training teachers, and upon the teachers 
themselves. In this view of it, the movement is to be encouraged. 

This matter is closely related to the political life and the moral 
character of the American people. It has been much considered and 
often discussed by all who are interested in healthful moral progress 
and in the strong and steady advance of democracy. Views have dif- 
fered about it. Historical events have been seen from different 
points of view and through different eyes, and, therefore, they have 
been interpreted in dissimilar ways. And as these historical events 
have related to things held sacred, faith has often been involved. On 
each side it has seemed that principles were at stake which patriotic 
and religious people could not yield. In other countries there have 
been wars over kindred matters and it is not at all impossible that 
there might be bloodshed over this very matter in other countries 
now. Yet we have uniformly treated it with as much forbearance 
as sincerity. We have not permitted ourselves to get overexcited 
in discussing it. We know that religious wars are over among 
people who are sane. We realize that any real progress toward 
conclusions that will be widely accepted will have to come through 
amiable discussion by intelligent people who are lacking neither in 
spirituality, nor patriotism, nor candor. Evidences that we are near- 
ing such conclusions, through such processes, are not altogether 
wanting. And it looks as though sincere and patriotic Protestants, 
and Roman Catholics, and Jews, and others, have gained and are 
continuing to gain respect for one another through the discussion. 

Yet even our amiability should not deceive us. The matter is vital 
because it penetrates to the very bone and sinew of the moral char- 
acter of the nation. The millions of children who are steadily in 
the public schools of the country need something more than secular 
training plus the moral discipline and influence of the school, which 
are so dependent upon the character of the teacher. They need to 
hear something that is sacred as well as sound ; something that moves 
their inmost feelings, as well as something that attracts their fancy. 
That something is in the Bible and the hymn and the Lord's Prayer. 
The teachers need this ; and the atmosphere, the indefinable spirit of 
the school, needs it. There is danger that, in a system of schools 



88 

from which these things are rigidly excluded, the moral sense may 
lose something of its strength and flavor ; that in schools that are 
absolutely secular, even the teachers may become less and less vital 
factors in building moral character. The contention that, while 
ethical considerations will move the cultured few, nothing but re- 
ligious feeling will stir the mass, of course has weight. Even so, it 
is the settled conclusion of the American people that religious and 
political freedom and the independence of church and state are of 
yet more weight. And the vital need of common schools in such a 
democracy as ours is also of more weight. The religious training 
may be given in the homes and churches. If it is not given there 
to all children, or given as well as may be desirable, then ecclesias- 
tical and sectarian leaders ought to come to an accommodation which 
will permit moral and even religious teaching in all practicable ways, 
and so much, at least, as is accepted by all, ought to be enforced in 
the common schools. 

It is a great pity that good men who, for many years, have studied 
and preached theology, that is, a system of human reasoning about 
God and religion, can not realize how little the people care about 
the differing philosophies of the thing and how much they are stirred 
by the thing itself. The clergymen of earlier days emphasized their 
philosophy of religion more than religion itself. To some extent, 
though to a much less extent, that is still so. Church rivalries, pride 
in organization, in history, in theory, are often at the bottom of this 
difficulty in common schools. The fear that one sect may over- 
reach or proselyte the children of another sect is the main obstacle 
to spiritual culture in the schools of the people. That will be re- 
moved only by the increasing generosity and confidence which 
must come through a conscientious care to avoid offense. And 
in all that, the men of God might be even larger factors than the 
teachers of the schools. 

It is too bad that the Bible has become so much involved in theo- 
logical and sectarian dispute. The Ten Commandments are the vital 
basis of society. There is no more complete code of morals in any 
literature than in the New Testament. The historical and literary 
value of large parts of the Bible is very great. There is no disagree- 
ment among most of the sects about any moral virtue and there is 
small difference between them concerning religion. The differences 
are not so much over things that are in the Bible as over doctrinal 
theology that will never either save or damn anybody of whom it 
can not be said either that " much learning hath made him mad," 
or that he lacks the strength to rise above a philosophy that can 



89 

neither be established nor disproved. There is little sectarianism in 
the Bible. The differences are outside of the Bible, and are not 
material : the things that are fundamental are cherished by all. 

The story of religious, moral, and educational progress in all lands, 
so far as I can understand it, seems to show, first, that the enlight- 
ened feeling of the people who sustain churches and give substance 
to society, holds that the dominance of literary and scientific studies 
by the ecclesiastically sectarian point of view is limiting to an extent 
which can not be acquiesced in, and that theology will have to square 
with modern knowledge and feeling rather than with ancient history 
and dogma; second, that there is no irrepressible conflict between 
science and religion, and that the spiritual feeling of men and women 
is not only to aid and influence the search for scientific truth, but 
is to be itself acted upon by definite scientific knowledge ; third, that 
science*and religion, so harmonized, are necessary yokefellows in the 
evolution of individual character and of governments that can best 
serve the great interests of the human race ; fourth, that the sub- 
stitution of formal courses in morals for religious training or for the 
religious influence in the schools will not settle the difficulties and 
meet the needs of the situation; and fifth, that so long, at least as 
contention over religious theory and resulting sects persists, what 
needs to be done will be best done and, as far as it may be, by the 
church being wholly independent of the state, and the state and its 
schools being wholly independent of the church ; by the churches 
seeking intellectual light as well as spiritual impulse, and by the 
schools having, at all hours of the day, the advantage of yet more 
strict moral discipline and of all the religious influence that the sects 
can agree that they may have. 

I can not move to the conclusion of my discussion without a defi- 
nite word to avoid the possibility of misapprehension. It must not be 
assumed that I intend any criticism, at least beyond so much of the 
excess of their zeal as may be unchristian or unreligious, upon re- 
ligious philosophies or the consequent sectarianism. On the contrary, 
I feel sure that Christianity has been the greatest light of the world, 
and that conscientious and freer religious thinking and the resulting 
religious denominations have produced the marvelous advances in 
world knowledge, activity, and feeling of the recent centuries. 
Doubtless, it has all been in the plan of the Almighty, and very likely, 
too, it is in the plan of the Almighty that religious philosophy and 
sectarianism having done a very excellent work shall yet come into 
the more harmonious and fraternal relations which will do a still more 
excellent one. It is not at all inconsistent with entire respect for 



90 

all sects, and all churches, and all ecclesiastics, to urge that, in the 
United States and in the twentieth century, all who are really con- 
cerned about a more vital religion and can appreciate the support 
which it may give to the advance of democracy and the stability of 
the social order, shall at least avoid an excess of confidence in mere 
human reasoning and an excess of zeal in mere sectarianism, suffi- 
ciently to enable all of the children in the public schools to hear some- 
thing of so much of the Bible as is common to all, and have some 
share in simple exercises which stir the religious feelings, which, in 
the absence of theological interpretation, are practically the same 
among all people of every faith. 

One of the greatest developments in human history has come in 
our day and very particularly in our country. It is the realization of 
the equality of human right and opportunity and of the imperative 
subjection of all to the human interpretations of divine law. We 
have the inalienable right to be equal parts of a great whole, the 
state, the nation, the world, the universe. But the rights we have 
are waived unless we conform to the social, the constitutional, the 
scientific, the moral, the divine order. Fulness of study and freedom 
of action are dependent upon the protection and aid of the estab- 
lished order ; and the forms, the spirit, the energy, and the possibili- 
ties of the social order are what men and women make them. They 
are dependent upon human generosity, conciliation, and cooperation, 
and none can deny that these result in larger measure from free 
schools that are common to all, than from any other institution of 
the Republic. 

The good of these schools may well have become a passion in 
America. They have been at once the notable expression and the 
vital need of our democracy. Immigration, the national expansion, 
the intensification and steadily increasing intricacy of the Nation's 
life, have put a great strain upon them but they have stood all the 
hard tests. There is nothing in our history or in any other history 
to turn us back. Experience, which is even better than logic, or 
which gives logic its inevitable trend and brings it to irresistible con- 
clusions, tells us to go forward. We are to go forward by making 
the teaching as good as we can, and by making the power of religion 
as potent as we can agree to make it in the schools. We will read 
the Bible and sing a hymn and repeat a prayer, until objections are 
interposed. We will avoid offense and conciliate objectors. When 
the principle of religious freedom is conscientiously invoked we will 
meet it with conscientious respect. Thus we will leave nothing un- 
done which we may do to enlarge the moral power of the schools. 



9i 

And we will remember that the subject we have been discussing is 
not an academic or pedagogical, so much as a public and practical, 
matter. To be sure, it has been a sensitive and rather troublesome 
matter ; and it has loomed up everywhere. All progress has encoun- 
tered it. Constitutional liberty and stability have had to deal with it. 
It was a menace to the American colonies when they became inde- 
pendent states. The menace would have become greater with delay. 
The leading statesmen of the time met it at once, with clean-cut de- 
cision, and in the only rational way. The foundations they laid have 
grown to a sacred and beneficent temple which has sheltered a mar- 
velous growth in the Republic. The people understand the matter. 
They will protect their temple. And the great tower above it will 
continue to send its lights to the four corners of the earth. 



SPECIAL THEMES IN PREVIOUS REPORTS 

1906 Illiteracy in New York 

1907 Libraries in the State of New York 

1908 Our Children, Our Schools, and Our Industries 

1909 Agriculture and its Educational Needs 

1 9 10 New York Colleges and Universities and the State System of 

Education 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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